Coupling Methodology within the Software Platform Alliances

CEA, ANDRA and EDF are jointly developing the software platform ALLIANCES which aim is to produce a tool for the simulation of nuclear waste storage and disposal repository. This type of simulations deals with highly coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical and chemical (T-H-M-C) processes. A key objective of Alliances is to give the capability for coupling algorithms development between existing codes. The aim of this paper is to present coupling methodology use in the context of this software platform.Comment: 7 page

Strange Bedfellows in the Personal Computer Industry: Technology Alliances between IBM and Apple

Until recently technological development in the personal computer industry could be characterized by the competition between two basic designs. The current dominant design in this industry is associated with the IBM and Microsoft personal computing architecture. The other version of personal computing originated in the Macintosh computer from Apple Computer Company. In recent years we also see an increasing number of alliances between IBM and Apple. Joint technological development appears to be a major and somewhat surprising objective of these alliances. This paper analyzes the technology alliances between these companies in the context of recent technological changes, focusing on the timing and the objectives of these alliances. Technology partnering between these proponents of competing basic designs are found to only materialize several years after the DOS-based design of IBM and Microsoft had become dominant. This study is of a qualitative and exploratory nature, using both a small data set and two case studies.management and organization theory ;

Becoming a keystone: How incumbents can leverage technological change to create ecosystems

The proliferation of digital technology and automation in the 21st century has created a need to\ua0revisit established theories on value creation. Exponential advances in Internet of Things (IoT)\ua0technologies are dismantling firm- and industry-specific value creation processes. The firms\ua0developing digital technology-based products and services typically participate in broad\ua0networks, which allows them to integrate distinct systems and technologies to produce a focal\ua0value proposition. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how incumbents can leverage\ua0technological change to create an innovation ecosystem.\ua0The concept of an innovation ecosystem is a powerful analogy to explain value co-creation in\ua0a network. In general, ecosystems are broad cooperative networks, in which the actors coalesce\ua0organically and co-evolve through the construction of a value proposition. Although several\ua0scholars have studied value co-creation in an ecosystem, few have explored the process of\ua0ecosystem emergence. Also, extant research on ecosystem primarily investigates orchestration\ua0capabilities from the perspective of technology firms or new entrants that emerge within an\ua0ecosystem. Few empirical studies investigate how incumbent firms can co-create value and\ua0develop capabilities to orchestrate an ecosystem as a keystone actor.In this context, this thesis investigates a manufacturing firm’s efforts to develop a new\ua0technology. The research was designed as an ethnographic in-depth case study of Volvo Car\ua0Group, an incumbent in the automotive industry. The thesis employs a qualitative abductive\ua0research approach to explore the collaborations related to the development of AD technology,\ua0a discontinuous technological change for incumbent automotive firms. Based on a four-year\ua0longitudinal case study and findings from four papers, the thesis makes important contributions\ua0to scholarly understanding of ecosystem emergence in traditional industries.This thesis makes three main contributions to literature on innovation ecosystems: (1) it\ua0describes ‘layered modularity’ as a design mechanism that facilitates joint value creation\ua0leading to the emergence of an innovation ecosystem, (2) it shows how developing physical\ua0products (such as devices or hardware platforms) and digital systems (such as IoT technologies\ua0or software) in distinct layers allows intertwining of divergent innovation activities anddevelopment methods, (3) it distinguishes between three distinct activities – cooperation,\ua0coordination and competition – that incumbents firms need to manage in order to become a\ua0keystone actor and orchestrate the ecosystem. The findings presented in this thesis have\ua0important implications for manufacturing firms looking to leverage a DTC to create new\ua0ecosystems

What do business models do? Narratives, calculation and market exploration

Building on a case study of an entrepreneurial venture, we investigate the role played by business models in the innovation process. Rather than debating their accuracy and efficiency, we adopt a pragmatic approach to business models -- we examine them as market devices, focusing on their materiality, use and dynamics. Taking into account the variety of its forms, which range from corporate presentations to business plans, we show that the business model is a narrative and calculative device that allows entrepreneurs to explore a market and plays a performative role by contributing to the construction of the techno-economic network of an innovation.WP abstract: Analyzes the uses and functions of business models through original, qualitative case studies focused on research-based spin-offs.Business models; spin-offs; innovation; commercialization; calculation; exploration; R&D; entrepreneurship

Essays on Business Value Creation in Digital Platform Ecosystems

Digital platforms and the surrounding ecosystems have garnered great interest from researchers and practitioners. Notwithstanding this attention, it remains unclear how and when digital platforms create business value for platform owners and complementors. This three-essay dissertation focuses on understanding business value creation in digital platform ecosystems. The first essay reviews and synthesizes literature across disciplines and offers an integrative framework of digital platform business value. Advised by the findings from the review, the second and third essays focus on the value creation for platform complementors. The second essay examines how IT startups entering a platform ecosystem at different times can strategically design their products (i.e., product diversification across platform architectural layers and product differentiation) to gain competitive advantages. Longitudinal evidence from the Hadoop ecosystem demonstrates that product diversification has an inverted U-shaped relationship with complementors success, and such an effect is more salient for earlier entrants than later entrants. Earlier entrants should develop products that are similar to other ecosystem competitors to reduce uncertainty whereas later entrants are advised to explore market niche and differentiate their products.The third essay investigates how platform complementors strategies and products co-evolve over time in the co-created ecosystem network environment. Our longitudinal analysis of the Hadoop ecosystem indicates that complementors technological architecture coverage and alliance exploration strategies increase their product evolution rate. In turn, complementors with faster product evolution are more likely to explore new partners but less likely to cover a wider range of the focal platforms technological layers in subsequent periods. Network density, co-created by all platform complementors, weakens the effects of complementors strategies on their product evolution but amplifies the effects of past product evolutions on strategies.This three-essay dissertation uncovers various understudied competitive strategies in the digital platform context and enriches our understanding of business value creation in digital platform ecosystems

Toward a process theory of entrepreneurship: revisiting opportunity identification and entrepreneurial actions

This dissertation studies the early development of new ventures and small business and the entrepreneurship process from initial ideas to viable ventures. I unpack the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial actions and new ventures’ investor communications through quality signals to finance their growth path. This dissertation includes two qualitative papers and one quantitative study. The qualitative papers employ an inductive multiple-case approach and include seven medical equipment manufacturers (new ventures) in a nascent market context (the mobile health industry) across six U.S. states and a secondary data analysis to understand the emergence of opportunities and the early development of new ventures. The quantitative research chapter includes 770 IPOs in the manufacturing industries in the U.S. and investigates the legitimation strategies of young ventures to gain resources from targeted resource-holders.Open Acces

Minimizing Complementors’ Risk in Third-Party Innovation: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of Digital Platform Configurations

The emergence of platforms is shifting the locus of digital innovation to ecosystems on which numerous developers create extensions with additional functionalities. Despite all the potential benefits for complementors, however, this new organizing logic of digital innovation also introduced essential new risks. Recent studies in IS focused on risk of IT projects from a contingency perspective neglecting the complexity of ecosystems. In order to shed light on this, our work examines how app architecture as a complementor´s control mechanism and four types of ecosystem hazards shape the likelihood and impact of the risk of failure in third-party innovation. By using a configurational approach based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA), we display complex interactional effects of the causal conditions on complementors’ perception of hazardous environments and thus provide valuable insights for both practice and theory on platform ecosystems

Innovative coordination of agribusiness chains and networks

To facilitate scientifically grounded innovative forms of strategic network coordination, this paper integrates two major bodies of literature on competitive advantage. The two bodies of literature are the industry-oriented outside-in approach, and the competence-oriented inside-out approach, here homogenized along the dimensions of degrees of firm embeddedness, respectively, the broadness of shared resource bases. The elements detailed are interfirm relationships, resource bases, network governance instruments, coordination mechanisms, the impact of events on network structures, and the active mobilisation of actors and resource. Thereby, the paper is able to detail 5 generic types of business networks. Next, it relates 21 network governance instruments to type of partnerships (binding vs loosening), forms of interaction (cooperative vs opportunistic). The realized reduction of network complexity enhances conceptual transparency and increases the instrumental usage of this research for effective network coordination by businesses. An integrated case illustrates the usefulness of the various concepts and the coherency of the different elements