Synergy Of M&A Of The Internet Enterprise Based On The Perspective Of Ecosystem Strategy Theory——A Comparative Study Of LeTV And Xiaomi Group

With the revolution and development of technologies and the implementation and practice of the concept of"the Internet+",the competition paradigm of contemporary enterprises and the critical resources on which enterprises rely have also changed,the connotation and extension of corporate advantages have also developed.Today,with the acceleration of industrial integration and the upgrading of consumer demand,many enterprises turn to Ecosystem Strategy,especially the Internet companies.Different from the classic strategy theory,Ecosystem Strategy is a kind of strategy which is based on shared thinking.It emphasizes the establishment of a community of symbiotic,mutually beneficial and renewed interests among enterprises.In practice,a large number of companies built their ecosystem by doing mergers and acquisitions.However,due to some reasons,some M&A activities didn’t lead to satisfactory synergy and had more harm than good to the layout of Ecosystem Strategy.On the other hand,although the attention of some domestic scholars has already been attracted by Ecosystem Strategy,the existing research mainly focus on the construction logic of the ecosystems,the evaluation mechanism of the ecosystems and how to build it.Research on specific measures(such as mergers and acquisitions)in the process of building the ecosystem is relatively rare.Therefore,the author attempts to study the synergy of mergers and acquisitions of the Internet enterprises based on the perspective of cosystem strategy theory.In this paper,the author firstly summarized the existing theories.Then,according to Resource Dependence Theory,three merger and acquisition case studies of LeTV and Xiaomi Group have been conducted.Starting with the logic of Ecosystem Strategy,member types and the dependency relation among them,this paper analyzed the reasons for the discrepancies of M&A synergistic effects between selected cases,and at last,drew the conclusions.Based on the analysis,the author believes that the difference in synergy between the three selected M&A cases is mainly driven by the following three reasons:First,the logic of construction of the ecosystem of LeTV and Xiaomi Group is different;Second,the types of the members of the ecosystem involved in the three M&A activities and their dependencies are different.;Third,the types of critical resources that LeTV and Xiaomi Group rely on and the certainty of the dependencies between them are different.On this basis,the author drew the conclusions of this paper:First,the expansion within the same industry adopts“internal extension",while the cross-industry expansion adopts“extension type",which may bring better synergy;Second,different types of ecosystem members and different dependencies between them will lead to different synergies.Third,maintaining a consistent and stable acquisition and rational distribution of critical resources is a prerequisite for achieving synergies.