A Review of the Seven Modelling Approaches for Digital Ecosystem Architecture

A dynamic digital ecosystem is an interrelated network of organisations, people and/or entities that interact and collaborate for value co-creation. The challenge is how to effectively model the digital ecosystems operating in a highly complex and dynamic environment. There are several modelling approaches to choose from. There is a need to evaluate the existing modelling approaches to support the modelling of digital ecosystems. This paper evaluates the scope and coverage of the selected seven modelling approaches (Adaptive Enterprise Architecture, ArchiMate, TOGAF, FAML, ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010, SABSA, and ITIL) for modelling the digital ecosystems. Adaptive enterprise architecture is taken as a reference architecture for this review due to its higher relevance to digital ecosystem layers. The results of this review indicate that every modelling methodology is different in scope and coverage and demands the integration and tailoring of a context specific modelling approaches to provide the type of support needed for digital ecosystems.