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Digital economies are increasingly characterized by firms that create and capture value without owning the core assets on which their operations depend. This theory-development article advances a coordination-centric perspective to explain how focal firms achieve competitive advantage in decentralized digital ecosystems. Integrating research on asset-light business models, platform governance, and distributed coordination, the article identifies a fundamental shift from ownership-based control to orchestration-based advantage. It argues that firms no longer rely on asset possession but on their capacity to structure and align interactions among legally independent actors through platforms, standardized interfaces, data-exchange protocols, and relational governance mechanisms. The proposed framework conceptualizes the firm as a coordination hub embedded within a network of externally owned assets, where strategic influence is exercised through architectural design and adaptive governance rather than hierarchical authority. It elucidates key mechanisms—including dependence management, dynamic repositioning, and feedback-driven governance—that enable firms to sustain performance under conditions of distributed control and heightened interdependence. Six theoretical propositions specify the causal relationships linking orchestration intensity, ecosystem participation, and resilience to sustained competitive advantage. By reconceptualizing firm boundaries as permeable and relational, the article extends digital business and strategic management theory into fully decentralized contexts. It contributes by clarifying the micro-foundations of non-ownership strategy and by demonstrating how coordination capabilities substitute for ownership as the primary locus of control. The framework further offers managerial guidance for designing and governing ecosystems in which influence must be achieved without asset ownership, positioning orchestration capability as the defining source of advantage in the digital age.

Modern firms increasingly rely on external digital ecosystems to access infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data, and analytical capabilities that are difficult to build entirely in house. Cloud platforms, AI vendors, and data intermediaries now support core business operations rather than peripheral technical functions. This shift has expanded firm capabilities, but it has also created new forms of dependence. The central problem addressed in this article is that digital ecosystem dependence is often governed through fragmented IT, procurement, compliance, and legal processes. These arrangements can manage service delivery and contractual performance, but they are less suited to strategic vulnerabilities such as lock-in, opacity, bargaining asymmetry, data control loss, and exit difficulty. As a result, firms may become operationally efficient while becoming strategically constrained. The objective of this article is to develop a Digital Ecosystem Governance Framework for firms that depend on cloud platforms, AI vendors, and data intermediaries. The framework identifies the distinct dependence risks associated with each ecosystem partner type and integrates them into a unified governance logic. It treats dependence as a strategic management issue rather than a narrow technology sourcing problem. The proposed framework shows that effective governance of digital ecosystem dependence requires three interrelated capabilities: dependency risk assessment, protective governance mechanisms, and strategic governance oversight. Firms need contractual safeguards, technical portability, internal capability building, vendor diversification, data control mechanisms, and board-level visibility over dependence thresholds. The article contributes a governance-oriented perspective on how firms can use external digital ecosystems without becoming strategically captured by them.