Scaling digital solutions for wicked problems: Ecosystem versatility
通过分析联合国推动的四个数字解决方案（使用人工智能、区块链和地理空间映射），研究它们如何在国际上规模化，并识别出不同的生态系统角色和规模化类型，对研究数字解决方案国际化的学者和实践者有用。
Digital solutions are increasingly used to address "wicked problems" that are locally embedded but require global approaches. Scaling these solutions internationally is imperative for their success, but to date we know little about this process. Using a qualitative case study methodology, our paper analyzes how four digital solutions driven by the United Nations are built and how they scale internationally. These solutions address wicked problems through artificial intelligence, blockchain, and geospatial mapping, and are embedded in networks of partners which evolve during scaling to create unique ecosystem roles and configurations. We identify different ecosystem roles and find that the specific properties of digital solutions - modularity, generativity and affordances - enable either adaptation or replication during scaling. Building on these insights, we derive a typology of four different types of international scaling, which vary in their ecosystem versatility (how the ecosystem changes across locations) and the local adaptation of the application (the problems the solution addresses). This study presents a new way to examine the replication and adaptation dilemma for ecosystems and extends internationalization theory to the digital world.