Architecting rural smartness: A collaborative platform design for rural digital business ecosystem

The wide urban–rural economic gap, particularly in developing countries, has led to various problems. To lower the gap, the participation of rural communities in digital business ecosystems is being viewed as a promising approach. To this end, we use design science research methodology to present a reference architecture of a rural smartness platform that facilitates the emergence of a smarter business ecosystem. This ecosystem embodies the characteristics of rural smartness, which are empirically proven to have a strong positive impact on improving the rural economic climate. Evaluation by means of expert opinion, technical action research, and empirical research suggest that the proposed architecture effectively improves the rural economic climate and is feasible to be implemented in a real-world setting. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge regarding the establishment of a digital business ecosystem for rural communities, particularly by proposing a solution resulting from a design science perspective that is backed by empirical evidence.