Digital ecosystems and platform economy are based on a strong interconnection across organizations and allow for completely new business models. They conquer more and more areas of business and private life and companies feel the pressure to reason about new opportunities.

An integrated perspective on business, technological, and legal aspects is needed. However, there is no clear method how to shape such new digital ecosystems, neither in the business world nor in the software world.

While everyone acknowledges that this is a challenging task it often remains the question who could do it. We found that software architects can be promising candidates for ecosystem shaping as they should be used to seeing the big picture and designing in the large. However, what is needed goes far beyond the standard skill set of software architects.

We report from ecosystem projects and our experiences across many domains like banking, automotive, farming, smart city, etc. Our goal is to:

• make the audience interested in the world and business of digital ecosystems
• give them a clear terminology to talk about digital ecosystems and the describe them
• show architects what new challenges could be in front of them and how they can develop their career path
• demystify the term “platform”: everything seems to be a platform — we present a proven classification of platform terms that are helpful in the context of digital ecosystems
• give dos and don’ts in the shaping of digital ecosystems
• outline new roles that are needed when creating digital ecosystems