MADBE: A Multi-Agent Digital Business Ecosystem

In this paper we propose MADBE, a Multi-Agent Digital Business Ecosystem. The purpose of this system is to provide a digital software environment for small organisations where they can interact and collaborate with each other and create new joint ventures. We believe that a multidisciplinary approach based on biology, computer science, and business concepts is necessary to produce an evolutionary self-organising system for networked business of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). In particular, we propose the first multi-agent digital business ecosystem based on ecological metaphors, which will enable us to define certain characteristics, based on real nature interactions and will also permit us to study the resulting network of businesses from an ecological perspective. An interaction-centred approach based on interaction protocols for knowledge sharing is adopted for the implementation of this system.