EE mechanisms explicate how potential benefits for individual businesses arise from the environmental changes we call EEs. They thus capture the function of EEs. For example, EEs can in various ways increase demand; help a venture save time, money or other resources; provide more resources or new types of resources; make it possible for the venture to develop a better product or business model; or help it seize more of the value it creates. Thus, EE mechanisms describe in detail how a business is better off due to the presence of an EE compared to its absence. This may entail improved demand, supply, or value capture.

 

EE mechanisms are relational in nature. What potential benefits an EE can offer a particular business depends both on the inherent capacities of the EE and on the nature of the business and skills of its agents. Further, EEs provide mechanisms as a potential that typically requires action to become actualized. The table below provides an updated list of EE mechanisms with definitions and examples, sorted according to the main benefits they can offer.