The Welsh Assembly Government are about to invest £m’s in ‘DBEs’ (Digital Business Ecosystems). So what, you may ask, are DBEs and why is this money being invested?
At this juncture DBEs are in the early stage of their development, so these views are likely to change. Some see DBEs as a Web2.0 version of the Business Portals and eMarketplaces of the late 90’s, while others hold a different view, seeing them more as a set of P2P Web2.0 applications for business. WAG envisages DBEs as “Internet-delivered communities, populated with content and services developed or commissioned by their users, supporting one or more business sectors.”
One possible description of a DBE is that it is a “social networking site for business” where content is owned by its contributors and where no single organisation owns the network, meaning there should be no single point of failure (hence the P2P applications model).
Why is this money being invested?
WAG suggests that “DBEs will greatly assist participants, providing an online place to do business - where they can develop and coordinate collaborations and where joint product and service offerings can be assembled and offered to customers”. I.e. they’re hoping to create digital market spaces that both facilitate and lower the cost of day-to-day Welsh business activities.
What can we expect from a DBE?
If a DBE is little more than online business network and a digital market space; what will they actually deliver?
This is an area I’ve given some consideration and am happy to share my thoughts. As I see it DBEs are:
- a tool to manage your business contacts - except most of my contacts are still not on these networks. A web resource that provides single sign-on and access to up-to-date details for all my business contacts would be very useful, regardless of which site they’re on. The question is, Is this going to be a Web2.0 CRM tool like SalesForce & Highrise, a website liked LinkedIn, or a Plugin that synchronizes my address book contacts with their up-to-date online profiles?
- a knowledge resource - If an exchange of knowledge is the main function of Discussion Forum within Groups, where’s the DBE’s knowledge centre? E.g. there’s more knowledge stored on Slideshare (the world’s largest presentation sharing community), than on LinkedIn
- a collaboration tool - but most business networks are too open for many of the sensitive project discussions, so where does the confidential work actually take place?
- a business events resource - but most business events I attend are absent from these sites. Eventbrite and Upcoming have a better selection than LinkedIn, but still list fewer than 10% of local business events. Will the DBE be an events aggregator?
- a networking resource for local businesses. E.g. many Xing users have a strong European (German) connection, which is great if you’re a German business man/women. But what about everyone else? How many DBEs will we have to join?
- an eMarketplace - based on Web2.0 principles and content aggregation, e.g. the way Kayak works for the Travel industry
- a software platform - In which case, should the main players offer a white label service to local networking groups?
Since the majority of established online network providers do not as yet provide this range of services (although here LinkedIn is probably the market leader in this space); the first to do so could well become the platform of choice. At this stage the battle is far from won.
In truth, eBusiness has been with us for more than 40 years and is constantly evolving. New systems and applications are being developed by the day, with new networks replacing old every decade or so. If you want to test my theory, simply check how many eMarketplaces from the ‘dot com’ decade are still operational today, and this despite the $Ms that were invested in them at the time.
DBEs could well be the flavour of the next decade, if sufficiently funded and if sufficient businesses sign-up. If not, they will provide a few dozen consultancy companies with a nice income stream for the next five years or so; while delivering little in the way of social or structural change. Let’s hope I’m proved wrong on this last point.
