Research on the evolution of innovation ecosystems in the asset-light business model: a case study of Xiaomi (China)

In the current era of rapid development of the digital economy, 'becoming light' is not only a choice, but also a necessity. More and more companies are 'avoiding the heavy and choosing the light,' choosing the asset-light business model to gradually establish their own market competitive advantages. This study takes Xiaomi, a well-known Chinese company, as an exploratory case study to construct a theoretical model of the evolution of the enterprise innovation ecosystem under the asset-light business model. The results show that the innovation ecosystem under the asset-light business model has gone through the initial construction stage, expansion stage and strengthening stage, and three asset-light models in three stages are extracted: user participation model, complementary resource integration model and embedded platform model. This study attempts to deduce the evolution of the innovation ecosystem from the perspective of asset attributes, which helps to expand the research scope of the evolution of the enterprise innovation ecosystem.