Change of the Paradigm of Competition in the Age of Business Ecosystems

The article is devoted to the study of the issues of changing forms of competition in business in the 21 century. The authors explore different points of view about the concept of business ecosystems, originated in the 90s of the last century, which focuses on the consideration of competition not within individual organizations or even industries, but more broadly – in the environment as a whole. The development of network forms of organizations in the last century was accompanied by the transfer of free market conditions between participants in the value chain into the ecosystem (a community of participants working on the creation of product parts). This form of interaction leads to flexibility and adaptability due to the mobility of parts of the ecosystem, whose participants pursue the goal of joint value creation. Communities, unlike individual participants outside the ecosystem, are able to create integrated solutions for consumers, while maintaining high quality. With such network relationships, the relationships between competitors change, participants strive for co-evolution and increase the efficiency of the value chain. The ecological approach to competition is an actual and new trend in strategic management, which has a wide potential for study and implies consideration of competition with cooperation.