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Foreword for the Special Issue "The Economics of Digital Business Models"

Over the past decade, the distribution/growth of information technology (IT) has transformed the organization of economic activities. IT has enhanced economic agents’ capabilities to collect and process information, to coordinate and manage transactions. Although IT threatens the activities of traditional intermediaries, it also creates new opportunities and needs for intermediation. This special issue aims to define these new forms of intermediation and understand their underlying business models. This issue is composed of a selection of papers presented at the workshop, “The economics of eintermediation: What is specific in digital business models?” held in Paris (June 2005). This special issue proposes theoretical lenses for contrasting and characterizing new digital business models (DBM). A DBM is a three-dimensional model that combines elements of matching, assembling and knowledge management. The selected papers provide in-depth and complementary views on these three dimensions. The first dimension refers to the economics of matching and focuses on transaction costs and network externalities. Digital networks are generally understood to be market places where supply meets demand. The performance of transactions between “providers” and “consumers” (of information and services) requires dedicated resources to solve a set of transactional difficulties (matching demand and supply, secure transactions, risk management, etc.). Taking this approach, DBMs can be analyzed through their capacity to organize transactions and stimulate network externalities between the two sides of the “market”. The second dimension refers to the economics of assembling and focuses on assembling costs and users’ preferences for alternative composite goods. The role of assemblers is to combine content and functionalities to supply “packages” that fit the heterogeneous needs of users. DBMs refer to the alternative ways of settling trade-offs in terms of scope of assembling (and correlated degrees of integration between components) and strategies to extract value from users. The third dimension refers to the economics of knowledge management and examines how IT can stimulate innovation by providing tools for managing and sharing information