Today, "ecosystem leaders" are generally referred to as "keystone organizations". Keystone organizations can be large or small, complex or simple, and include not-for-profit or commercial for-profit organizations. Commercially oriented keystone organizations are the most dominant and most successful in terms of economic value created as a whole and for ecosystem members. Examples of commercial keystone organizations include large companies such as eBay, Google and Apple. Not-for-profit keystone organizations are less common and are emergent. Examples of not-for-profit keystone organizations include the Eclipse Foundation, Joomla, Drupal, the Mozilla Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation, and the Open Group.
post by Brian Hurley in Technology Innovation Management Review on how business ecosystems are led by keystone organizations in networks that provide opportunities for suppliers, customers, partners, and competitors. August 2009.