Extending digital infrastructures : a typology of growth tactics

Digital infrastructures enable delivery of information services in functional areas such as health, payment, and transportation by providing a socio-technical foundation for partnership governance, resource reuse, and system integration. To effectively serve new purposes and emerging possibilities, however, a key question concerns how an infrastructure can be extended to cater for future services in its functional area? In this paper, we approach such digital infrastructure growth as a challenge related to the alignment of new partners whose capabilities spur innovative services that attract more users. We advance an initial typology that covers four growth tactics (i.e., adding services, inventing processes, opening identifiers, and providing interfaces) with potential to set extension of infrastructures in motion. We then explore the proposed typology by investigating the ways in which its particular tactics successfully extended the scope of a digital infrastructure for public transportation. Our insights invite IS scholars to engage more deeply in the development of growth tactics, which achieve infrastructure extensions that make service delivery durable

Extending Digital Infrastructures: A Typology of Growth Tactics

Digital infrastructures enable delivery of information services in functional areas such as health, payment, and transportation by providing a sociotechnical foundation for partnership governance, resource reuse, and system integration. To effectively serve emerging possibilities and changing purposes, however, a key question concerns how an infrastructure can be extended to cater for future services in its functional area. In this paper, we approach such digital infrastructure growth as a challenge of aligning new partners whose digital capabilities spur innovative services that attract more users. We advance an initial typology that covers four growth tactics (i.e., adding services, inventing processes, opening identifiers, and providing interfaces) with the potential to set extension of infrastructures in motion. We then explore the proposed typology by investigating the ways in which its particular tactics successfully extended the scope of a digital infrastructure for public transportation in Stockholm, Sweden. Our insights invite IS scholars to engage more deeply in the development of growth tactics that achieve infrastructure extensions necessary for improving the durability of service delivery

Platform, or technology project? A spectrum of six strategic ‘plays’ from UK government IT initiatives and their implications for policy

There is a markedly broad range of definitions and illustrative examples of the role played by governments themselves within the literature on government platforms. In response we conduct an inductive and deductive qualitative review of the literature to clarify this landscape and so to develop a typology of six definitions of government platforms, organised within three genres along a spectrum from fully centralised, through to fully decentralised. For each platform definition we offer illustrative 'mini-cases' drawn from the UK government experience as well as further insights and implications for each genre drawn from the broader information systems literature on platforms. A range of benefits, risks, governance challenges, policy recommendations, and suggestions for further research are then identified and discussed

Mobile digital infrastructure innovation towards a tussle and control framework

The 21st Century is the century of digital infrastructures. The Internet and global mobile telecommunications infrastructures are increasingly converging at different layers. This paper is concerned with the understanding of the innovation of such converged mobile digital infrastructures. Digital infrastructures are established and operated by a heterogeneous collection of public and private organisations, each governed by own interests in the collaborative arrangement. The creation and distribution of value is collaborative, yet governed by conflicting interests. Two separate strands of research explore collaboration, conflict and control in digital infrastructure innovation. Research on tussles between participating interests emphasise the need to understand the complex relationships between collaboration and conflict. Research on architectural control points emphasises individual organisations’ ability to exercise control and generate value. So far these two research strands have not been subjected to a synthesis. The aim of this paper is to provide such an initial theoretical synthesis in the form of a tussle and control framework. The paper defines the concept of control points from a socio-technical point of view and applying this concept to an analysis of digital infrastructures, the tussles between stakeholders, and the discussion of value networks and innovative business models. This contributes to a finer granularity of the analysis of conflict, collaboration, and control on digital infrastructure innovation