APEC Cross-Domain Innovation Ecosystem Guidebook: A New Growth Path for SMEs through Digital Platforms

Big data, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence have become indispensable elements for small and medium enterprises to advance into digitalization. As a result, this guidebook, which is expected to serve as a promising roadmap for SMEs to respond to challenges in the digital economy, presents inductive case studies of three innovation ecosystems that adopt the digital technologies aforementioned, and summarizes three development stages and five factors of success.

The guidebook consists of four chapters. After the introduction and literature review, the guidebook first introduces what market demand is filled by ecosystems, how ecosystems operate, and what ecosystems have achieved. The guidebook further explains three development stages that the process of ecosystems development match, and, most importantly, the role that the public sector can play and resources they can provide. The guidebook concludes that cross-domain innovation ecosystem is a solution to SME’s sustainable growth, which is proved by case studies in the guidebook.