Revisiting the IIoT Platform Graveyard: Key Learnings from Failed IIoT Platform Initiatives

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has led to a competitive race among digital and incumbent players to establish IIoT platforms. However, despite the undisputed potential of the IIoT, a first wave of IIoT platforms failed around 2018, with GE’s Predix being the most prominent one. Nevertheless, building upon valuable lessons learned, the IIoT platform market continued to grow significantly. We now experience a second wave of IIoT platform failures, with companies like Siemens, Google, and SAP divesting or restructuring significant parts of their IIoT platform. Acknowledging this, we revisited the IIoT platform graveyard to challenge and extend existing lessons learned. Hence, we interviewed major IIoT platforms and customers that were impacted by IIoT platform failures. We identified six key learnings that we integrated into a preliminary model for IIoT platform growth, highlighting evolutionary steps for successful platform growth. These findings provide practitioners strategic orientation for establishing IIoT platforms long-term

From Suppliers to Complementors: Motivational Factors for Joining Industrial Internet of Things Platform Ecosystems

Spurred by the internet of things, industry firms are increasingly establishing platforms that animate an ecosystem of external actors to provide complementary offerings. But why do independent firms decide to join these ecosystems and to become complementors? The goal of this study is to disentangle their motivational factors in the context of the industrial internet of things. A theoretical framework is developed a priori based on the knowledge-based view of the firm and complementary logics. The framework is empirically explored using a case study design. Our results indicate that financial, technology, and knowledge gains positively influence the decision of complementors to join the ecosystem. Yet, our interviews reveal relative differences in motivations based on complementors’ uncertainty. Our findings contribute to the research on joining nascent digital platform ecosystems from a complementor perspective and the growing stream of research on industrial internet of things platforms

Driving Generativity in Industrial IoT Platform Ecosystems

While the generativity of digital platform ecosystems has been studied extensively in many business-to-consumer domains, research on the novel phenomenon of IIoT platforms is sparse. The peculiarities of IIoT platform ecosystems are a double-edged sword: On the one hand, the heterogeneity of actors and devices leads to high generative potential. On the other hand, the resulting complexity can impede its realization. Even though generativity is often seen as a platform’s inherent characteristic, our study suggests that it must be driven deliberately in complex domains like the IIoT. As initial results of a theory elaboration case study, we propose two modes that drive generativity in the form of a virtuous cycle by moving from abstraction of individual solutions to concretization of generic modules and vice versa. Our final results will contribute to extant literature on generativity in complex digital platform ecosystems and provide valuable insights for practitioners in the IIoT domain

Microfoundations of Dynamic Capabilities for Platform Ecosystem Establishment: Evidence from Enterprise IoT

The internet of things (IoT) and digital platforms have offered industrial companies new opportunities to compete against digital platform-native companies. To succeed in this competition, industry incumbents must learn to extend their traditional product and service business through platforms. However, extant research has focused primarily on the ability of platform owners to govern mature platforms for innovation but has largely ignored how industry incumbents can build these capabilities internally during the establishment of their platform ecosystems as part of larger transformational journeys. To address this gap, we conduct a multiple case study of three incumbent organizations, drawing on a dynamic capability lens. We identify 11 practical microfoundations of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring dynamic capabilities that aided three incumbents in establishing their IoT platform ecosystems. Besides the transformational activities, our findings contribute to the literature on platform establishment through three IoT-related shifts that deviate from known digital platform paradigms

Chemical abrasion applied to SHRIMP zircon geochronology: An example from the Variscan Karkonosze Granite (Sudetes, SW Poland)

International audienceThermal annealing followed by acid etching of zircon (chemical abrasion or CA) can be successfully utilised to minimize or eliminate the effects of major and cryptic Pb-loss for SIMS U-Pb zircon dating. The procedure is demonstrated by applying the U-Pb SIMS technique to both untreated and chemically abraded zircons from the Karkonosze Granite, Sudetes, SW Poland. Conventional U-Pb SIMS dating of untreated zircons yields an apparently coherent age population (n = 9) with a weighted mean 206Pb/238U age of 306 ± 4 Ma. Some untreated zircons display anomalously young 206Pb/238U ages (c. 225 and 238 Ma) and are likely to have suffered substantial Pb-loss. A sub-set of zircons from the same sample was chemically abraded. Physically, zircons treated in this manner display a range in the degree of etching and partial dissolution. Extreme examples developed a 3D network of sub-μm channels which follow high-U (dark CL) zones or linear defects, such as micro fractures or indistinct cleavage planes. U-Pb SIMS dating of treated zircons (n = 11) yields a mean 206Pb/238U age of 322 ± 3 Ma. Two analyses of treated zircons still display younger 206Pb/238U ages (c. 297 and 301 Ma) ascribed to the effects of Pb-loss. For the analysed sample, U-Pb ages determined from chemically abraded zircons are c. 5% older than those from untreated zircons. This is attributed to effective removal of metamict domains susceptible to Pb-loss. The CA technique also removes micro-inclusions thus lowering common Pb and reducing matrix effects. A cryptic Pb-loss in untreated zircons is only recognised when compared with chemically abraded counterparts or ages determined using other isotope techniques. This clearly demonstrates the utility of CA to high-spatial resolution methods and stresses that Pb-loss is detectable at a range of scales, regardless of the analytical technique used