Opportunity or Threat: A Complementors’ Perspective on Platform Owner’s Acquisitions

Acquisition of complementors is a prevailing mechanism available to platform owners to leverage digital platforms’ multidimensional growth. Notwithstanding platform owners’ propensity to acquire complementors, little is known about the potential effects of such acquisitions on the non-acquired complementors. While a group of complementors may benefit from an acquisition, others may perceive an acquisition as the platform owner entering into competition with its own complementors. To address this gap, we examine the acquisition of complementors’ effects on the other complementors in the context of a B2B innovation platform whose evolution is considerably influenced by a plethora of acquisitions. As part of an ongoing research project, in this paper we link academic discourses on acquisitions and platform owners’ market entry to derive a set of hypotheses, which we plan to test in the respective B2B innovation platform ecosystem

The Future of Digital Platform Design - The Case of the EU Platform Regulation Discourse

Digital platform research focuses on the mechanisms in digital platform ecosystems and the dynamics between platform owners, complementors, and end-users. Recent studies begin looking beyond the boundaries of narrow platform ecosystems. The development of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a revelatory case to study this wider perspective of ecosystems and its dynamics. Hundreds of actors participated in discourses on the regulation, which aims to regulate so-called gatekeeper platforms that are alleged to be powerful, unfair to platform users, and incontestable for competitors. By means of a critical discourse analysis, we coded 1720 contributions on the proposed and adopted DMA between June 2020 and July 2022. We identify 72 positions and 16 narratives along 5 discourses. Our study creates a better understanding of a wider perspective of platform ecosystem structure that goes beyond the triangle of platform owner, complementors, and end users

Breaking Down The Black Box Of Industry Platform Processes : A Systematic Literature

Purpose: Despite the increasing prevalence of industry platforms, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the processes that platform owners should undertake. Our knowledge of how these platforms are created, how they attract and integrate various actors, how they design governance mechanisms, how they manage internal and external issues, and how they evolve remains fragmented across different literatures. Moreover, our understanding of the antecedents and outcomes of these processes is limited. Design/Methodology/Approach: A systematic literature review of 442 articles from top-tier journals focused on industry platforms. Findings: This study makes three significant contributions: (1) identifying the key processes that platform owners pursue in the context of industry platforms, (2) identifying the antecedents and outcomes of these processes, and (3) presenting a comprehensive research agenda to guide future research on industry platforms. Originality/Value: Although previous literature reviews on this topic and other related ones have contributed valuable insights to the literature and we have leveraged them to enhance our understanding of industry platforms, none of these studies have comprehensively examined the processes involved in a platform owner's journey, including their antecedents and outcomes. Therefore, this study is the first to address this gap in the literature by comprehensively examining the black box of industry platform processes that platform owners undergo.© 2023 The Advanced Services Group. This is an Open Access Publication developed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Governance Mechanisms in Digital Platform Ecosystems: Addressing the Generativity-Control Tension

Digital platform owners repeatedly face paradoxical design decisions with regard to their platforms’ generativity and control, requiring them to facilitate co-innovation whilst simultaneously retaining control over third-party complementors. To address this challenge, platform owners deploy a variety of governance mechanisms. However, researchers and practitioners currently lack a coherent understanding of what major governance mechanisms platform owners rely on to simultaneously foster generativity and control. Conducting a structured literature review, we connect the fragmented academic discourse on governance mechanisms with each aspect of the generativity-control tension. Next to providing avenues for prospective digital platform research, we elaborate on the double-sidedness of governance mechanisms in fostering both generativity and control

Governance Mechanisms in Digital Platform Ecosystems: Addressing the Generativity-Control Tension

Digital platform owners repeatedly face paradoxical design decisions with regard to their platforms’ generativity and control, requiring them to facilitate co-innovation whilst simultaneously retaining control over third-party complementors. To address this challenge, platform owners deploy a variety of governance mechanisms. However, researchers and practitioners currently lack a coherent understanding of what major governance mechanisms platform owners rely on to simultaneously foster generativity and control. Conducting a structured literature review, we connect the fragmented academic discourse on governance mechanisms with each aspect of the generativity-control tension. Next to providing avenues for prospective digital platform research, we elaborate on the double-sidedness of governance mechanisms in fostering both generativity and control

Strategies for digital platforms at early stage of development : insights gained from three empirical studies

This thesis consists of three empirical studies of growing digital platforms at their early stage of development. The thesis tackles three vital challenges nascent digital platforms face: growing the platform’s complementary markets, scaling the platform user base, and building and expanding the platform ecosystem. The mingled use of the econometric and qualitative research approaches has been operationalized in three empirical settings: Amazon Alexa, Pinduoduo, and PingAn OneConnect’s Blockchain. The first study investigates how platform owners may leverage the timing of entry to the nascent platform complementary market as a strategic means to grow the viability of that market. The second research draws on the psychology domain and discusses an alternative design of platform referral scaling in acquiring platform users. The third paper explores the platform’s engagement with emerging technology and investigates how the adapted layered modular architecture could be used in building a platform ecosystem. Overall, by deciphering platform strategy studies through the proposed component view and carefully conducting three empirical analyses, this thesis aims to contribute novel insights into growing nascent platform’s generativity, user base, and ecosystem

Relations Between Actors in Digital Platform Ecosystems: A Literature Review

Digital platform ecosystems are a popular field of study in information systems and an economic structure of significant importance worldwide. However, we know little about what relations exist between and among actors on digital platforms. Findings of mutually beneficial interactions, cooperation, and value creation contrast findings of power, dependency, control, governance, rules, and competition in the ecosystem. To shed light on this issue, we conduct a structured literature review of information systems and management literature. In 144 studies, we find 19 different relations between and among platform owner, complementors, and end-users. We contribute to research in three ways. First, by discovering that instability of roles on digital platforms explains dual roles and the dynamics of roles more holistically than concepts that account for specific dual roles. Second, by finding weighting in the relations. Third, by observing nestedness of relations