Digital Transformation in the Automotive Industry: towards a Generic Value Network

The emergence of digital innovations is accelerating and intervening existing business models by delivering opportunities for new services. Drawing on the automotive industry, leading trends like self-driving cars, connectivity and car sharing are creating new business models. These are simultaneously giving rise for innovative market entrants, which begin to transform the automotive industry. However, literature does not provide a generic value network of the automotive industry, including new market players. The paper aims to visualize the current automotive ecosystem, by evolving a generic value network using the e3-value method. We define different roles, which are operating in the automotive industry by analyzing 650 companies reported in the Crunchbase database and present the value streams within the ecosystem. To validate the proposed generic value network we conducted five preliminary interviews with experts from the automotive industry. Our results show the central role of mobility service platforms, emerging disruptive technology providers and the dissemination of industries, e.g., as OEMs collaborate with mobile payment providers. Scholars in this field can apply the developed generic value network for further research, while car manufacturers may apply the model to position themselves in their market and to identify possible disruptive actors or potential business opportunities.