A critical, inward and outward view of Digital Ecosystems’ open, collaborative communities: interdisciplinarity, sustainability and scalability at the intersection of gift and exchange economies

The idea of ‘community’ represents a central notion in the body of knowledge emerging as part of the Digital Ecosystems (DEs) research and philosophy. This chapter draws from two deliverables produced for the DBE in order to highlight two important characteristics of communities and networks of practice, their knowledge and structural embeddedness. Knowledge embeddedness refers to the context specific frames of meaning and signification as indicated by the difficulties of translating knowledge across different communities. Structural embeddedness refers to the intertwining of socio-economic structures as expressed by the frequently overlapping character of digital, social, economic and professional networks. It is argued that these two aspects of embeddedness are crucial for the sustainability and scalability of Digital Ecosystems.