Summary: Digital Capital - Don Tapscott, David Ticoll and Alex Lowy

This work offers a summary of the book “DIGITAL CAPITAL: Harnessing the Power of Business Webs by Don Tapscott, David Ticoll and Alex Lowy”.

The central challenge of business in the digital economy is to form and build reserves of digital capital by harnessing the power of
business webs. Specifically, b-webs allow you to gain human capital without having to own it, to access customer capital through the formation of mutual relationships and to benefit form the structural capital other parties provide. To that end, there are now five well established b-web models which are proving to be successful in the creation of digital capital:
• Agoras – Open marketplaces where people come together to discover prices
• Aggregations – Online intermediaries who organize and coordinate a marketplace
• Value Chains – Integrators who manage the supply chain efficiently
• Alliances – Pools of knowledge shared by many working towards a common goal
• Distributive Networks – The backbone and infrastructure systems of the digital economy
In the years ahead, participation in b-webs will become an imperative rather than an option. In the era of digital customers, only those firms which are leading or actively participating in a b-web will have a sustainable competitive advantage.