Emergent vs. Summative Resource Integration and Value Co-Creation in Service-Ecosystems

While the notion that resource integration is central to understanding value co-creation in service eco-systems, there has been little effort made to date to provide a clear and detailed definition of what we mean by resource integration. We use the philosophical concept of emergence to make a clear distinction between instances of resource integration based on emergent relations, and instances of resource integration based on resource combination – or summative – relations. We propose that it is these new properties of emergent resource integration that become the focus for the value appraisal of the resource integrators. Using the concept of emergence, we can see how emergent resource integration may lead to both new emergent properties in service eco-systems, properties which may help and/or hinder the viability of service eco-systems, and how the assessment of the value co-created by resource integrators may be related to those emergent new properties