From Supply Chain to Digital Ecosystem: Synchronizing Business Model Change during Digital Transformation

This study explores how business model change is coordinated across firms during the digital transformation of a traditional supply chain into a digital ecosystem. Drawing on interdisciplinary research from the ecosystem literature in sociology, business model literature in management, and digital transformation literature in information systems, the purpose of this study is to provide theoretical insight into business model change during the digital transformation of a supply chain. Based on a ten-year longitudinal case of a beef farming supply chain, the study demonstrates that business model change unfolds through the intertwined dynamics of latency and emergence. Latency involves early-stage, non-economic groundwork, such as data infrastructure, trust-building, and standardized procedures, that lays the foundation for value propositions and future economic gains. Emergence captures the simultaneous, feedback-driven recalibrations of business models across interconnected actors as real-time data begins to synchronize decisions and operations. Using deductive theorizing grounded in the Gioia Method, the study reveals how business models of firms in a supply chain incrementally align with others to catalyze systemic change. Over time, data and derived intelligence becomes a strategic asset enabling new value creation, delivery, and capture mechanisms across the ecosystem. The findings extend traditional firm-centric and static views of business models, offering a dynamic, co-evolutionary perspective. This research contributes to the literature on digital transformation, business models, supply chain, and ecosystems by explaining how distributed, data-enabled coordination, rather than central control drives large-scale business model changes. It provides theoretical and practical implications for managing digital transitions in complex, inter-organizational settings.