Overview of approaches to research of business ecosystems

The subject of study of this article is the metaphor of «business ecosystem» that extends the descriptive possibilities of organizations interacting with each other. Based on the study the relevance of the consideration of the concept of «business ecosystem» as gaining increasing popularity among researchers and practitioners around the world, the goal of the study was formulated, which consists in substantiating the importance and scientific correctness of the use of the term «ecosystem» as applied to business, highlighting the essential characteristics of ecosystems as the basis for their taxonomy. Based on the semantic analysis of a wide range of defined term for this use. By analogy with biology, methods for studying ecosystems using merologic and holistic approaches are described, and possible characteristics of the object of study within each approach are considered. To formulate the classification of ecosystems, we proposed a description of their key characteristics based on the static (configuration) and dynamic components. The advantages of the ecosystem ecosystem metaphor were examined in comparison with other ways of describing inter-organizational interaction - business models, clusters, and intercompany value chains. The findings conclude that the concept of the ecosystem approach is appropriate when transforming the configuration of existing latent ecosystems in existing business sectors.