Bridging differing perspectives on technological platforms: Toward an integrative framework

“Given the entrality of economies of scope in theories of organizations (Teece, 980; Wernerfelt, 1984; Helfat and Eisenhardt, 2004), this comon underpinning provides the intuition that an organizational ens might be useful to develop a unifying framework for platforms. y organization I do not…”

“…by breaking up a complex system into discrete components, which interact through standardized interfaces within a standardized architecture, one can eliminate what would otherwise be an unmanageable spaghetti tangle of systemic interconnections (Simon, 1962; Parnas, 1972; Langlois, 2002).”

“…complexity of one of the elements crosses a certain threshold, that complexity can be isolated by defining a separate abstraction that has a simple 4 Ulrich (1995) defines product architecture as “the scheme by which the function of a product is allocated to physical components” (Ulrich, 1995, p.…”

“…on platforms to the literature on inter-organizational netork dynamics (Powell et al., 1996, 2005; Uzzi, 1997; Ahuja, 2000; rass et al., 2004; Dhanaraj and Parkhe, 2006; Zaheer et al., 2000) to erive insights on patterns of emergence and evolution of platform cosystems as networks of…”

“…(from complementor to competitor for example, or vice versa) and associated shifting patterns of collaboration and competition, are in fact a feature of ecosystems (Iansiti and Levien, 2004), one that ought to be treated explicitly in rigorous attempts to theorize technological platforms.”

“The central tenet of the modularity literature is precisely that modular product architectures facilitate innovation (Langlois and Robertson, 1992; Baldwin and Clark, 2000; Schilling, 2000).”

“…are then defined as ‘. . .a building block, providing an essential function to a technological system – which acts as a foundation upon which other firms, loosely organized in an innovation ecosystem, can develop complementary products, technologies or services’ (Gawer, 2009a: 2; Gawer, 2009b: 54).”

“Platform design stands out as a common element across this set of organizational contexts (Huang et al., 2005; Simpson et al., 2006; Jiao et al., 2007).”

“…study of mobile andheld platforms, and finds an inverted U-shape relationship etween innovation and opening platform access, consistent with a crowding out” of innovation incentives when competition among omplementors increase beyond a certain level, a hypothesis conrmed in Boudreau (2012).”

“…exclusively through pricing Literature • Sanderson and Uzumeri (1995) • Brusoni (2005) • Gawer and Cusumano (2002) • Meyer and Lehnerd (1997) • Zirpoli and Becker (2011) • Baldwin and Woodard (2009) • Simpson (2004) • Sako (2009) • Boudreau (2010) • Eisenmann et al. (2011) n (au pace m 3 o s…”

“Intel for example ook particular care to ensure that its complementors could remain rofitable by refraining to compete directly with them in a number f markets (Gawer and Henderson, 2007).”

“…value of the platform stems rincipally from the access of “one side” to the “other side” of he platform, the question of platform adoption becomes “how to ring multiple sides on board” (Evans, 2003; Rochet and Tirole, 006) while avoiding the “chicken-and-egg problem” (Caillaud and ullien, 2003).”

“This facilitates autonomous innovation within modules, as well as mix-and-match innovation through innovative recombination of modules (Garud and Kumaraswamy, 1995).”

“…specific kinds of esign choices on product architecture (Ulrich, 1995) that could elp firms generate product families (Sanderson and Uzumeri, 995) and innovate more quickly and systematically by using and e-using common assets (Krishnan and Gupta, 2001) as templates or product innovation.”

“Section 3 presents a classication system of three different categories of platforms (within 1 The concept of meta-organization, originally used by Ahrne and Brunsson (2005) o characterize organizations of organizations, was further clarified by Gulati et al. 2012).”

“…innovation in a way that protected complementors’ ncentives helped establish the continued support of an ecosystem f firms whose business models were tied to the new, open ‘Wintel’ Windows + Intel) PC architecture, which had by then become the ndustry platform (Gawer and Phillips, 2013).”

“…relations between supply-chain member organizations • Ecosystem governance ◦ In the special case of multi-sided markets: exclusively through pricing Literature • Sanderson and Uzumeri (1995) • Brusoni (2005) • Gawer and Cusumano (2002) • Meyer and Lehnerd (1997) • Zirpoli and Becker (2011) •…”

“…being shared across firms within supply-chains (Brusoni, 2005; Zirpoli and Becker, 2011; Zirpoli and Caputo, 2002; Brusoni and Prencipe, 2009; Sturgeon, 2002; Doran, 2003; Huang et al., 2005; MacDuffie, 2013; MacDuffie and Helper, 2006; Sako, 2009; Simpson et al., 2006; Tatsumoto et al., 2009).”

“…firms, research has also documented how manufacturing platforms were increasingly being shared across firms within supply-chains (Brusoni, 2005; Zirpoli and Becker, 2011; Zirpoli and Caputo, 2002; Brusoni and Prencipe, 2009; Sturgeon, 2002; Doran, 2003; Huang et al., 2005; MacDuffie, 2013;…”

“As explained earlier (and as in West, 2007), the concept of open interface is never black and white, and even within ecosystems, there are variations within the spectrum of how open these interfaces are.”

“For example, Apple’s iPhone ecosystem has been described as a “walled garden” (Hazlett et al., 2011), while Google Android’s operating system has been seen as “more open”, and open source software has been seen as a purely open ecosystem.”

“…also considers how technological interfaces (and which parts of the technology are “open” or “closed”) or governance (such as membership and participation rules) shape collective outcomes (Ceccagnoli et al ., 2012; Cennamo, 2016; Gawer & Cusumano, 2002; Gawer, 2014; Wareham et al ., 2014).”

“Some scholars use ecosystems to denote the organisational form associated with an industry platform (Gawer, 2014) or as an unspecific notion of a collection of assets (Thomas et al., 2014).”

“…Gawer argues, platforms have often been theorized from two distinct perspectives: “economic theory conceptualizes platforms as markets (Rochet & Tirole, 2003),” whereas “engi-neering design theorizes them as ‘modular technological architectures’ (Baldwin & Woodard, 2009)” (Gawer, 2014, p. 1240).”

“Particularly problematic is that business scholars tend to treat platforms as relatively static objects (Gawer, 2014; Tiwana, 2014).”

“…challenge is to innovate together and preserve the collective welfare as defined by the overall vibrancy or performance of the ecosystem, while at the same time preserving or enhancing the individual performance of ecosystem members in competitive markets (Lopez-Berzosa and Gawer 2014).”

“However, major emphasis is on using an industrial level of analysis, with less attention on the implications for internal organization (Gawer, 2014).”

“Just as platforms facilitate the connection between supply and demand (Baldwin and Clark 2000, Gawer 2014), digital infrastructures provide the necessary computing and networking resources.”

“The degree of openness also influences competition within and across ecosystems (Gawer 2014; Thomas et al. 2014).”

“2010), APIs and software patterns (Alexander 1999), and the network effects of digital platforms (Gawer 2014).”

“Technically, integration of services may be realised by using so-called platform technology, which facilitates interactions between trav-ellers and suppliers of transport services in an improved or smarter way (Ballon, 2009; Gawer, 2014).”

“We also identi fi ed some opportunities for further research. i) It is not clearhowa fi rmbecomes aleader of anindustryplatform(as suggested by Gawer, 2014); ii) Which the organizational processes to implement and manage an industry platform are; iii) How to integrate the supply chain platform and…”

“…C - a common factor for all three digital startups was that they operated a multisided platform business connecting different pools of customers (Gawer, 2014; Evans and Schmalensee, 2016) and, having selected similar business approaches, it was easier to carry our comparisons and cross-case…”

“Marketplaces, a rapidly emerging category of platforms (Gawer, 2014; McIntyre & Srinivasan, 2016), enable and support transactions between independent supply-and demand-side participants.”

“On the other hand, many researchers set ecosystem design as a research topic in their papers (Gawer, 2014; Gawer and Cusumano, 2014; Hienerth et al., 2014; Khavul and Bruton, 2013; Wareham et al., 2014; Wei et al., 2014).”

“Platforms constitute a shared set of technologies, components, services, architecture, and relationships that serve as a common foundation for diverse sets of actors to converge and create value (Gawer & Cusumano, 2002; Gawer, 2014).”

“…offerings into a coherent, customer-facing solution” (Adner, 2006: 98), at the core of an innovation ecosystem one often finds a technology platform: a set of shared assets, standards, and interfaces that underpins an activity system surrounding it (Gawer, 2014; Thomas, Autio, & Gann, 2014).”

“However, the essential concepts underlying their application have remained the same—modular architectures have standardized interfaces that: (a) enable the reuse of shared components or assets that, in turn, leads to economies of scale and scope in innovation (Bresnahan & Trajtenberg, 1995; Gawer, 2014); and (b) allow…”

“First, following the notion that successfully managing a platform ecosystem is an inherently dynamic process (Gawer, 2014), future research will benefit from studying evolving governance strategies over time and as a function of other factors.”

“…the generation of network effects can be the source of tremendous benefit to users and profit for platform owners, they can eventually lead to winner-take-all scenarios, where industries are dominated by a few platform players (Gawer, 2014), potentially leading to detrimental impacts on users.”

“Notwithstanding, there have been recent calls to enhance our understanding of how innovation ecosystems come into existence in the first place (Gawer, 2014; Autio and Thomas, 2014).”

“In the initial phase of industrial digital platform development, manufacturers often develop product platforms around key installed bases (Gawer, 2014; Sandebrg et al., 2020; Svahn et al., 2017).”

“…of platforms, ecosystems, and digital innovation, these themes were not mainstream in management research (see, for example, Cusumano et al., 2019, 2021; Gawer, 2009, 2014; Gawer & Cusumano, 2002, 2014; Gawer & Srnicek, 2021; Jacobides et al., 2018; McIntyre et al., 2020; Shipilov & Gawer, 2020).”

“As path channeling is successfully achieved, the chances that a firm's digital resource turns into a platform, that is, an "evolving organizations or meta-organizations composed of agents who can innovate and compete" (Gawer 2014, p. 1240), increases.”

“According to Annabelle Gawer (2014, 1239), ‘platforms are evolving organisations or meta-organisations that (1) federate and coordinate constitutive agents who can innovate and compete; (2) create value by generating and harnessing economies of scope in supply or/and in demand side of the markets; and (3) entail a mod…”

“…interplay in how each element of the bundle contributes to the overall value of the system, and there are important interdependencies between the actions of the members comprising the ecosystem (Pierce 2009, Ceccagnoli et al. 2012, Gawer 2014, McIntyre and Srinivasan 2017, Jacobides et al. 2018).”

“Different types of platforms have been described in the literature (Gawer 2014; Thomas et al.”

“Economists take a different approach and emphasize that these are multisided markets—that is, the platform faces both workers and consumers (Gawer, 2014).”

“However, prior research has primarily focused on the role of external factors in strengthening DPC, particularly at the industrial level (e.g., Gawer, 2014).”

“Digital platforms are digital systems that facilitate communications, interactions, and innovations to support economic transactions and social activities (Cennamo, 2019; Constantinides, Henfridsson, & Parker, 2018; Gawer, 2014; McIntyre & Srinivasan, 2017; Thomas, Autio, & Gann, 2014).”

“A digital technology platform is ‘‘a building block, providing an essential function to a technological system – which acts as a foundation upon which other firms can develop complementary products, technologies or services’’ (Gawer 2014, p. 2).”

“…considerable management research and much of it suggests that understanding platforms and their ecosystems requires new theoretical insights (e.g., Gawer, 2014; Gawer & Cusumano, 2014; McIntyre & Srinivasan, 2017; Nambisan, Lyytinen, Majchrzak, & Song, 2017; Teece, 2018; Yoo, Boland, Lyytinen, &…”

“2 A platform’s technological architecture shapes its core functionalities (Baldwin and Woodard 2009, Gawer 2014), which can affect both competitive performance (Gawer and Cusumano 2002, Zhu and Iansiti 2012) and incentives of independent firms to develop complements (Anderson et al. 2014, Tiwana et…”

“This is somewhat surprising, as Gawer (2014) and de Reuver et al. (2018), for example, consider the na-scence (or “ genesis ” ) of MSPs a very promising and worth-while area of research.”

“All these uses remain relevant (Gawer, 2014).”

“…argument of the platform ecosystems literature is that technological evolution in interdependency situations stimulates competition and cooperation (Gawer, 2014; Hannah & Eisenhardt, 2018), and that platform owners need to balance their business and technological decisions not to discourage…”

“Some firms transition from a portfolio of digitized products to a product platform over which they develop an offer of a family of derivative digital products (Gawer 2014).”

“Platforms are distinct from traditional companies in the way they mediate transactions across particpants and how they create network effects (Gawer, 2014).”

“A core feature of the platform business model is the intermediation of multi-and two-sided markets (Gawer 2014).”

“The current debate on Industry 4.0 in manufacturing has only partially been influenced by the “economic perspective” of platform research so far (Gawer, 2014; McIntyre and Srinivisan, 2017), the main focus being on manufacturers sponsoring technological platforms to engage with third-party…”

“This is also what differentiates multi-sided platforms from manufacturing or product platforms that firms may use to optimize manufacturing of a product or a family of related products in concert with a network of suppliers (Gawer, 2014; Krishnan and Gupta, 2001).”

“This in turn increases the probability of achieving innovation through the digital platforms [64,65].”

“…and open innovation, it is also relevant for future research and management of coopetition (e.g., Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996; Gnyawali and Park, 2011; Fernandez et al., 2014; Bouncken et al., 2015) and platforms (e.g., Gawer, 2014; Gawer and Cusumano, 2014; Bogers et al., 2017), respectively.”

“…inter-or intradependent networks where participants co-create value (Adner & Kapoor 2009; Autio & Thomas 2014; Kijima 2015; Smedlund & Faghankhani 2015) and to which participants attach complementary products, services or technologies (Jacobides et al. 2006; Gawer & Cusumano 2014; Gawer 2014).”

“…knowledge spillovers between the interdependent modular components of a technological system and their providers (Boudreau, 2010; Gawer and Cusumano, 2002, 2014; Gawer, 2014); adoption of components across the system (Ozcan and Santos, 2015); and integration of system components (Boudreau, 2017).”

“…and platforms studies and information systems research are particularly sensitive to the medium-specificity of platforms as programmable and extensible technical systems that enact institutional relationships through software (Bogost and Montfort, 2009; Gawer, 2014; McIntyre and Srinivasan, 2017).”

“…and Gann, 2014; Van Alstyne, Parker and Choudary, 2016) and have left many incumbents either disadvantaged (Eisenmann, Parker and Van Alstyne, 2011; Gawer, 2014), disrupted (e.g., Kumaraswamy, Garud & Ansari, 2018), or struggling to grow at the rates that markets expect (Benner and Ranganathan,…”

“This approach is informed by recent suggestions (e.g., Gawer, 2014) that an organizational perspective can further our understanding of knowledge creation in knowledge ecosystems.”

“…platforms' functionality via increased network effects and innovation potential (Binken & Stremersch, 2009; Claussen, Essling, & Kretschmer, 2015; Gawer, 2014), one of the key challenges of this increased openness is the need to maintain control over all parties involved (Boudreau, 2010;…”

“Annabelle Gawer (2014) envisaged platforms as evolving technological organizations that create multi-sided markets, federating and coordinating Internet actors in innovation and competition, and creating value by harnessing economies of scope in supply or/and in demand.”

“Digital platforms 1 as an emergent organizational form (Gawer, 2014; Nambisan et al., 2017) are characterized by (1) technology: a technological architecture constituted of a modular core, standardized interfaces, and complementary extensions (e.g., Baldwin and Woodard, 2009; Karhu et al., 2018),…”

“Ecosystems may (or may not) overlap with platforms (Gawer, 2014).”

“…enhanced through interactions in offerings as DIPs that were not mere intermediaries between different types of customers, as in demand-side economic markets, for instance (Rochet and Tirole 2006), or modularizations of products, as in supply-side product development, for instance (Gawer 2014).”

“Digital platforms have traditionally been conceptualized in economic and technological terms as two- or multi-sided markets built on a technological architecture that intermediates transactions among platform actors (Gawer, 2014; Sun & Tse, 2009; Tura et al., 2018).”

“For instance, some fi rms choose to establish a dynamic control over di ff erent stakeholders, while relying on them to provide products and services to each other (Dattée et al., 2017; Gawer, 2014; Gawer and Cusumano, 2002).”

“From an organizational perspective, studies on platforms often address questions like how to become a platform leader (Gawer, 2009), how to make money on offering something via a platform (Eaton, 2012), or on the role and level of control that developers have (Tiwana et al., 2010).”

“When we say ‘platform’, we are referring to a digital exchange platform firm, defined as online places or infrastructures (i.e. websites and mobile apps) designed spe-cifically to facilitate transactions and other valued exchanges of goods, information and opinion (Gawer, 2014).”

“Additionally, Facebook made a number of high-profile acquisitions, including Instagram (already in 2012), WhatsApp (2014), Oculus VR (2014), and LiveRail (2014).”

“A technological platform is a stable set of technological components that are shared and reused by developers of diverse complements (Baldwin & Woodard, 2009; Gawer, 2014).”

“Gawer (2014) further argued that agents can be both individuals and firms, hence diverging from the typical economic perspective on digital platforms, which focuses on consumers.”

“Our decision of going for a two-dimensional typology with control and functionality scope as main dimensions re fl ects an engineering design view of platforms (Gawer, 2014), as well as the need to strike a balance between simplicity and granularity.”

“…and controlling developments in ICTs – e.g., mobile apps that enable quick and automated identification and matching of these exchange partners (Gawer, 2014) – platform managers and owners become hierarchically central to sharing activities and can potentially generate significant levels of…”

“weight to the claim that successfully managing a platform ecosystem is an inherently dynamic process (Gawer, 2014; Tiwana et al., 2010).”