The Effect of Generic Strategies on Software Ecosystem Health: The Case of Cryptocurrency Ecosystems

Thus far, no research has been done into the effect of business strategies on software ecosystem health. This research aims to fill that gap by combining the Open Source Ecosystem Health Operationalization (OSEHO) and generic strategies. These models are combined and tested on five cases of cryptocurrency ecosystems: Ripple, Ethereum, Litecoin, IOTA and zCash. Findings suggest that the generic strategy Focused Differentiation has the biggest positive impact on ecosystem health. Further research is necessary to see if this is also true for more mature and more stable ecosystems.