The formation mechanism of IT-driven emerging industries: A perspective of Generalized Ecological Community

The fast development of information technology since 1980s has reconstructed traditional industries and initiated the industrial innovation. As the result, IT-driven emerging industries have increasingly become the most promising part in today´s economy. However, the comprehensive mechanism that dominates the formation of IT-driven emerging industries needs to be further explored in order to conduct systematic and effective promotion. In essence, the formation of emerging industry is a process of industrial innovation, which must have some potential markets, effective driving forces, appropriate environmental conditions, and the necessary elements of related resources, to establish a new industry chain. This paper analyzed that innovation process from the perspective of Generalized Ecological Community (GEC), a new conceptual community with the common rules and characteristics both in natural ecosystem and socioeconomic system, and presented an approaching model to describe the formation mechanism of IT-driven emerging industries. With the case of online travel service, an empirical study was developed based on presented model.