"The Aggregate Level for Strategy Research: Industries, Ecosystems or Architectures?"

With sectors like telecommunications, media, entertainment but also financial services changing, there is an increasing appreciation of the role of “ecosystems”, sets of collaborating and competing firms which are putting forth value propositions. The upsurge in interest in “ecosystems”, in “multi-sided platforms” and more broadly in the “architecture” of sectors and of the structure of competition pose some fundamental questions to scholars interested in strategy and in the emergence and evolution of industries. Specifically, which should be the “aggregate” level of analysis we should consider? Are we past the stage where “industry” where firms compete is a useful construct? Should we focus on the “architecture” of sectors, and if so, which elements are important? Should we consider “ecosystems”, and if so, how do we map these ecosystems, within and against which firms compete? A set of senior scholars who have made contributions in the areas of industry analysis (and policy), research on ecosystems, on industry architectures, on dynamic capabilities and evolutionary dynamics will provide their views, and then engage in conversation with the audience in what we hope will be a session that will break new theoretical ground.