Shifting Design Capability to Third-Party Developers: An affordance Perspective on Platform Boundary Resources

Boundary resource theory has emerged as conceptual tool for understanding the complex relationship between platform owners and third-party developers. Drawing on existing theories of boundary objects and boundary spanning competence it suggests that platforms offer influence over external ecosystems, yet keeps it at arm’s length. To exercise such governance, however, platform owners have to figure out how to design boundary resource to transfer design capability to third-party developers. Addressing this challenge, we analyze a digital platform initiative in the automotive industry from an affordances perspective. By doing so, we have explore what platform boundary resources allow developers to achieve, rather than what they are. As a main obstacle in the transfer of design capability, we found that platform owners’ perceptions of what a specific boundary resource affords often differ from third-party developers understanding of the same resource

Managing Organizatinal Resources as Platform Boundary Resources

Approaching digital innovation via digital platforms shifts firms’ locus of attention to the different actors in their ecosystems. Firms tend to empower the platform’s ecosystem through expanding developer contribution via introducing boundary resources such as application programming interfaces (APIs). This study addresses the challenge of platform owners managing their internal assets as platform boundary resources. We seek to answer how platform owners can identify and visualize values of potential boundary resources by conducting a single case study at a large international company active in embeded software development area. This study suggests e3 value modelling as a tool to assist platform owners in understanding the platform ecosystem actors, the values of assets for the ecosystem and how these values can be interchanged among the actors

Preparation and Optimization of a Novel Disintegrating Golqand Pellets as a Traditional Persian Pharmacy Formulation: The Path to Be Embarked upon

Introduction: Multi-particulate dosage form of pellet is formed by agglomeration of fine powdered drugs and excipients, leading to free flowing spherical particles. The multi-step process of extrusion & spheronization are mostly applied for preparation of uniformly-sized pellets. Golqand, a product of Traditional Persian Pharmacy containing Rosa damascena Mill petals is a heart and brain tonic, refresher, astringent, and a stomachic. It helps to improve appetite and relieves digestive diseases. Also, Golqand calms down nervous system. Based on traditional texts, it has been produced as a Jam-like preparation, imposing some difficulties in taking and dosing. In this study, we have prepared Golqand in pellet form, a novel solid dosage form and optimized this natural formulation. Methods and Results: In this study, a 20 runs D-optimal method was applied as an experimental design to establish the optimum conditions for Golqand pellet preparation by extruder spheronizer equipment. The preparation process of pellets was optimized by a systematic multi-objective-optimization approach in terms of D- values for the particle size distribution (i.e. D10, D50 & D90) which are the intercepts for 10%, 50% and 90% of the cumulative mass obtained via sieving method. The Model F-value of 6.58 implied the models were significant.  There is only a 0.34% chance that a "Model F-Value" this large could occur due to noise. The R2, adjusted R2, predicted R2, and adequate precision for D50 model were calculated 82%, 72%, 46%, and 10.06, respectively which means that there is a good correlation between parameters and model. Conclusions: In conclusion, presented models conducted us to prepare Golqand pellets with unimodal particle size distribution and pre-defined particle size. Applying pelletization method for Golqand preparation could resolve some critical challenges of natural formulations like taking similar doses

Pharmacy or PharmaNBIC: Thinking about 50 years ahead of pharmacy

The contemporary trends and concepts in pharmacy are widely affected by the emergence of Nano-, Bio- or Info- technologies (NBI) as an attempt to develop different principles of medicine. This commentary is trying to make a think tank room for 50 years ahead of pharmacy where the ambience of pharmacy will be affected by such technologies (NBI) together with cognition (NBIC) to achieve intelligence, low adverse reaction and holistic action medicals.   </p

Wallflower (Erysimum cheiri (L.) Crantz) from Past to Future

Wallflower (Erysimum cheiri (L.) Crantz) is a common medicinal plant in Persian medicine and nowadays some traditional products from wallflower are consumed on global markets. The aim of the present study was to study the phytochemical constituents of wallflower and discuss safety evaluations related to the traditional wallflower preparations. Major Persian scholars (e.g. Avicenna) books, Persian manuscripts (e.g. Makhzan-al-advia) and Arabic medical manuscripts (e.g Alshamel-fi alsanaat altebya) of the medieval Islamic era as well as current search engines including Pubmed, Scopus, Siencedirect, and Google Scholar were included in the study from 1700 up to 2018 A.D. In traditional medicine manuscripts, various topical and oral dosage forms of wallflower were administered in low doses. After renaissance, phytochemical investigations reported cardiac steroids in wallflower and it might be the reason that next medical investigations on the herb have been interrupted. According to in vivo studies, topical indications of cardiac steroids in doses lower than their inhibitory concentration 50 (IC50) should be safe and effective in some cutaneous disorders. Wallflower is reported to have several different classes of compounds including: 11 types of cardenolides (such as strophanthidin, bipindogenin, uzarigenin, cannogenol and digitoxygenin derivatives), two flavonoids, a cyanidin and two glucosinolates. Therefore, for safety guarantee, wallflower products require dose adjustment based on IC50 and probable cardenolide soluble content in that dosage forms.  </strong

Potential Effects and Mechanisms of Action of Topical Wallflower (Erysimum cheiri (L.) Cranz) Administration in Anal Fissure

Anal fissure is an ischemic ulcer that occurs in anoderm and it has no obvious etiology and pathophysiology in current medicine. Anal fissure has a profound history in Persian and Persian medicine and wallflower (Erysimum cheiri (L.) Crantz) has been a common medication in this case. Traditional oil and/or dilute decoction of wallflower has been introduced as an effective topical medicine for anal fissure in Persian medicine.The aim of this study was to demystify the ancient wisdom in administration of low-dose wallflower for anal fissure, via the view point of modern pharmacological mechanisms. The basic idea and source of information was according to Persian and Arabic medicine manuscripts of the medieval Islamic era. Electronic literature was searched for related phytochemical and pharmacological studies available in Scopus, Google scholar, Pubmed and ScienceDirect databases from 1900 to 2018. The results showed that different parts of wallflower contain several types of cardiotonic steroids, isothiocyanates and flavonoids. Low-dose topical cardiotonic steroids, below their IC50, could have potential effects on the ischemic condition of anal fissure ulcer and collagen synthesis in the local fibroblasts, by stimulation of Na+/K+ ATPase pump. Furthermore, other active compounds in wallflower are isothiocyanates that could be responsible for tissue protective effects by induction of NRf2 expression and activating TRPA1 channels. Also wallflower flavonoids are responsible for anti-inflammatory, analgesic and wound healing properties. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that low-dose topical wallflower administration is hypothesized to have anal fissure healing potential in conventional medicine. This study has introduced a novel mechanistic approach for anal fissure treatment

Resource Transformation in Platform Envelopment

Product developing organizations rapidly increase their investments in digital platforms to capture value from external ecosystems. This enforces a shift in attention from up-front development of end-user functions to generic resources, providing design capability in those ecosystems. However, to cultivate a prosperous ecosystem around its platform firms also need to invest in building an initial installed base to kick-start network effects. Since strong network effects tend to foster winner-take-all competition platform entrants have to carefully consider how to avoid fighting to the death for increased installed base. In this research in progress we explore how firms may develop platform strategies through envelopment. As an organization exercises envelopment it seeks to enter an existing platform market by bundling its own platform resources with a target platform. We report on an action research design initiative where a global automaker engages in the transformation of existing organizational and technological resources into new platforms resources when seeking to enter the ecosystem around Google’s Android. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm we engage in an analysis of our preliminary data, indicating that such resource transformation has to be anchored in a careful and structured assessment of how different resources may provide competitive advantage in existing value chains and in the upcoming ecosystem respectively

Shaping Boundary Resources of a Digital Platform: Alliance Co-development Perspective

Platform owners attract third-party developers when shaping a digital platform. One approach they use is to launch the platform and then tune the boundary resources with the developers. Another way is to co-create the platform boundary resources from the beginning with the developers. We investigate a platform built and owned by a consortium of organisations in the maritime sector. Our aim is to investigate the ways boundary resources are shaped in a platform owned by a consortium of organisations. We follow the process of shaping three boundary resources by combining historical data from project reports and key respondent interviews with the consortium participants following a qualitative case study approach. Our findings highlight that designing boundary resources with developers decreases process uncertainty; developers assume a more active role in shaping the boundary resources if they are involved from the start; and early onboarding of developers increases boundary resource use

TRANSFORMING ORGANIZATIONAL RESOURCE INTO PLATFORM BOUNDARY RESOURCES

The emergence of digital platforms shifts the locus of innovation from firms to ecosystems. This shift deprives product-developing firms of established control mechanisms and calls for new alternatives. Existing literature argues that platform owners have to empower ecosystems, while respecting the au-tonomy of members. This point to a contradiction; platform owners and third-party developers are interdependent, yet, at the same time, fundamentally detached. Contemporary research suggests that we may address this contradiction through the concept of boundary resources. Serving as the interface for arm’s length relationships, boundary resources are shaped in the interplay between platform own-ers and application developer. However, we have found that they are also formed in a continuous ne-gotiation with existing firm assets. Therefore, in this research we ask how product-developing firms transform internal resources into platform boundary resources. We conducted a case study of a digital platform initiative at Volvo Group, a global truck manufacturer. Drawing on the concept of tuning, we studied Volvo’s practices in shaping boundary resources within and across multiple organizational and technological contexts. We found that resource transformation may leave firms in limbo; exposing an asset as a platform boundary resource tends to destroy its value as an internal organizational re-source