DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND THE LIMITS OF BUSINESS MODEL TRANSFERABILITY BETWEEN CHINA AND THE WEST

Digital business models are embedded in ecosystem architectures: the combination of platforms, complementors, payment rails, identity systems, and governance rules through which value is created. This thesis argues that the repeated failure of such models to move between China and the West is not primarily due to cultural differences or insufficient localisation, but to architectural incompatibility. Using a qualitative multiple-case design, it develops a six-dimension framework of ecosystem architecture and applies it to both regions and selected market-entry episodes. First, the contrast between a closed West and an open China does not hold up: each is open at layers where the other is closed. The key difference is not openness itself, but where the boundary is drawn and who has the authority to define it—the firm in the West, the state in China, and increasingly regulators in both. Second, the divergence is structural. The West developed around an open protocol layer that generated little revenue, shifting competition toward control of distribution and the device—a vertical position. China, by contrast, developed in the absence of established payment and trust intermediaries, making infrastructure the valuable and more horizontal position. Third, a model can cross an ecosystem boundary according to the availability of the complements it requires. Models that carry their own core engine and can obtain complements from neutral providers travel more easily. Those dependent on complements controlled by interested incumbents generally do not.