Complementors as connectors: managing open innovation around digital product platforms

In the digital age, open innovation is increasingly organized around platform ecosystems. This paper investigates how firms can coordinate open innovation as a platform strategy for the development of complementary products by independent third parties. We draw on a qualitative case study of Philips Hue – a connected lighting platform for consumers with its variety of complementary products. We identify three increasingly complex ways in which independent complements connect to a focal platform. Our findings show that managing these connections requires a hybrid open innovation approach that combines arm’s length coordination, with a large number of complementors through open interfaces, and intensive bilateral collaboration, with a selected number of partners. Our findings demonstrate that complex interconnections across digital platforms and products lead to the management challenge of navigating an ‘ecology of platforms’, which warrants future research

Sustaining Complement Quality for Digital Product Platforms:A Case Study of the Philips Hue Ecosystem

Innovation in a digital world increasingly revolves around open platforms that consist of a core technology and a large variety of complementary products developed by an ecosystem of independent complementors. The platform ecosystem literature has mainly focused on indirect network effects arising from the quantity of complements, with little attention to the quality of complements, despite the importance of quality for the complementary value that drives platform ecosystems. Because digital products are malleable and dependent on the ever-evolving ecosystem, we advance a relational and dynamic conceptualization of complement quality. Drawing on a systematic, in-depth qualitative case study of the Philips Hue connected lighting platform and its complementary third-party apps, we study how and why complement quality is sustained over time. By analyzing apps and their updates, we developed a process model that explains pathways through which complement quality is enhanced, maintained, or deteriorates. Changes in the platform core, changes in other ecosystem elements, and idiosyncratic connections by users result in expanding affordances, materializing glitches, and emerging obsolescence. Without further action, glitches and obsolescence lead to deteriorating quality. Joint action of complementors, platform owners, and users is needed to act upon affordances, glitches, and obsolescence, in order to maintain integrity and enhance functionality. This paper contributes to the literature on innovation in platform ecosystems by explaining the dynamic and relational nature of complement quality in a digital platform ecosystem and showing the interdependence of ecosystem members (the triad between platform owner, complementors, and users) in sustained development efforts

Pro-socially motivated interaction for knowledge integration in crowd-based open innovation

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study how the online temporary crowd shares knowledge in a way that fosters the integration of their diverse knowledge. Having the crowd integrate its knowledge to offer solution-ideas to ill-structured problems posed by organizations is one of the desired outcomes of crowd-based open innovation because, by integrating others’ knowledge, the ideas are more likely to consider the many divergent issues related to solving the ill-structured problem. Unfortunately, the diversity of knowledge content offered by heterogeneous specialists in the online temporary crowd makes integration difficult, and the lean social context of the crowd makes extensive dialogue to resolve integration issues impractical. The authors address this issue by exploring theoretically how the manner in which interaction is organically conducted during open innovation challenges enables the generation of integrative ideas. The authors hypothesize that, as online crowds organically share knowledge based upon successful pro-socially motivated interaction, they become more productive in generating integrative ideas. Design/methodology/approach: Using a multilevel mixed-effects model, this paper analyzed 2,244 posts embedded in 747 threads with 214 integrative ideas taken from 10 open innovation challenges. Findings: Integrative ideas were more likely to occur after pro-socially motivated interactions. Research limitations/implications: Ideas that integrate knowledge about the variety of issues that relate to solving an ill-structured problem are desired outcomes of crowd-based open innovation challenges. Given that members of the crowd in open innovation challenges rarely engage in dialogue, a new theory is needed to explain why integrative ideas emerge at all. The authors’ adaptation of pro-social motivation interaction theory helps to provide such a theoretical explanation. Practitioners of crowd-based open innovation should endeavor to implement systems that encourage the crowd members to maintain a high level of activeness in pro-socially motivated interaction to ensure that their knowledge is integrated as solutions are generated. Originality/value: The present study extends the crowd-based open innovation literature by identifying new forms of social interaction that foster more integrated ideas from the crowd, suggesting the mitigating role of pro-socially motivated interaction in the negative relationship between knowledge diversity and knowledge integration. This study fills in the research gap in knowledge management research describing a need for conceptual frameworks explaining how to manage the increasing complexity of knowledge in the context of crowd-based collaboration for innovation

Managing innovation ecosystems around Big Science Organizations

BSOs are large research organizations established purposefully to address fundamental and complex scientific research challenges that cannot be addressed in isolation by individual universities, research institutes, or even government agencies. Unlike universities and other national research institutes, BSOs are unique scientific organizations by virtue of their sheer size, level of complexity, and uncertainty with respect to the outcomes of research and development. BSOs involve large networks of suppliers and collaborators in science, government, and business, constituting a complex system with permeable boundaries that offer opportunities for technology transfer, knowledge accumulation, and business creation. Hence, BSOs are influential players within complex systems of innovation, learning, and business creation. Despite their important role for national and international economies as well as society at large, our current understanding of their management and impact is underdeveloped in both theory and practice. We know less about the challenges and opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship in a context of changing economic, technological, and societal environments that arise in the broader ecosystem surrounding BSOs. To address this void of research, we made this special issue to focus on innovation and entrepreneurship around BSOs to create a richer foundation for future conceptual and empirical research on science management and innovation. The work included in this special issue offers some new insights regarding innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of BSOs. To embed these individual findings into existing research, we provide a comprehensive overview regarding innovation involving BSOs capturing the full picture of the fundamental issues in this regard. Thus, this introduction of the special issue offers an overview on the innovation ecosystem around BSOs as a common reference point for the fundamental mechanisms of innovation in relation to BSOs and relevant stakeholders

Digital innovation: transforming research and practice

There is no doubt that digital technologies are spawning ongoing innovation across most if not all sectors of the economy and society. In this essay, we take stock of the characteristics of digital technologies that give rise to this new reality and introduce the papers in this special issue. In addition, we also highlight the unprecedent opportunities that digital innovation provides to study innovation processes more generally. Overall, we conclude that the speed, observability, and relative ease in investigating relationships between multiple analytical levels, mean that digital innovation is both a ‘model of’ that also provides a ‘model for’ the study of innovation processes more broadly in non-digital and hybrid contexts

Managing innovation ecosystems around Big Science Organizations

BSOs are large research organizations established purposefully to address fundamental and complex scientific research challenges that cannot be addressed in isolation by individual universities, research institutes, or even government agencies. Unlike universities and other national research institutes, BSOs are unique scientific organizations by virtue of their sheer size, level of complexity, and uncertainty with respect to the outcomes of research and development. BSOs involve large networks of suppliers and collaborators in science, government, and business, constituting a complex system with permeable boundaries that offer opportunities for technology transfer, knowledge accumulation, and business creation. Hence, BSOs are influential players within complex systems of innovation, learning, and business creation. Despite their important role for national and international economies as well as society at large, our current understanding of their management and impact is underdeveloped in both theory and practice. We know less about the challenges and opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship in a context of changing economic, technological, and societal environments that arise in the broader ecosystem surrounding BSOs. To address this void of research, we made this special issue to focus on innovation and entrepreneurship around BSOs to create a richer foundation for future conceptual and empirical research on science management and innovation. The work included in this special issue offers some new insights regarding innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of BSOs. To embed these individual findings into existing research, we provide a comprehensive overview regarding innovation involving BSOs capturing the full picture of the fundamental issues in this regard. Thus, this introduction of the special issue offers an overview on the innovation ecosystem around BSOs as a common reference point for the fundamental mechanisms of innovation in relation to BSOs and relevant stakeholders