Ecosystems, Digital Technologies, and Firms’ Performance: investigating the Italian pharmaceutical ecosystem

The present study seeks to analyze the impact of the adoption of digital technologies on the performance of the companies operating within a business ecosystem, a particular group of economic actors whose activities need to be coordinated in order to achieve a collective outcome that creates value for the final consumer. For this reason, the impact of adopting digital technologies at ecosystem level might be different than in other networks, especially for what concerns the various performance dimensions (i.e. operational, economic, and environmental). In addition, given the broad spectrum of digital technologies and the several combinations of technologies that can be undertaken, their effect on the performance of companies operating within ecosystems might be unpredictable. Figure 1 represent the model that will be tested in this research.