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).”

“These effects help enhance the overall NPD capability of the entire platform ecosystem (Gawer 2014).”

“Internet technology-based platforms arise in line with ‘the platform economy’ [31].”

“Platforms reorganise the ways in which fi rms interact with each other (Gawer and Cusumano 2002; Gawer 2014; Parker, Van Alstyne, and Choudary 2016), particularly among the platform owners and their complementors.”

“…discrete components with standardized interfaces; at the subsystem level, peripheral participants (individuals or teams) can enjoy a more autonomous sphere of action with further specialized focus and reduced scope of information (Felin and Zenger, 2014; Garud and Kumaraswamy, 1995; Gawer, 2014).”

“…if successful, cements the firm at the center of a platform ‘ecosystem’, the architecture and governance of which permit the platform to further identify and tap additional sources of value from its participants by defining the rules of participation (see also Gawer 2014, Bearson et al. 2019).”

“Social media platforms should be considered “evolving organizations” [11], which exhibit transience, or “change, often dramatically and in short periods of time, in their policies, procedures, and affordances” [4:2].”

“Interfaces contribute to reduce a system ’ s complexity by greatly simplifying the scope of information required to develop each component (Gawer 2014).”

“The main actors within these IE, so-called platform leaders, are strongly influenced by technologies in the design of the architecture and interfaces, and in the choices of intellectual properties that delineate the relationships with the other actors of the ecosystems that provide complements [30,102].”

“…relationships between participants and platform firms as “ black-boxes ” (Srinivasan and Venkamatran 2010), and so tend to focus mainly on the impact of available supply on market outcomes; and 3) overlook process dynamics and governance activities beyond pricing (Gawer 2014; Wareham et al. 2014).”

“In the high- tech context, firms such as Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, and Intel have leveraged platforms to allow third- party application and software developers, as complementors, to innovate and add their products or services on top of a, more or less, standardized platform interface (Gawer, 2014).”

“Gawer [20] and Evans and Gawer [16] classify platforms according to their principal purpose and identify roughly three different types of digital platforms: transaction platforms, innovation platforms and integration platforms.”

“…in between the engineering view which emphasizes that platforms are technological architectures that facilitate innovation (Iansiti, Levien, 2004; Gawer, 2014) and the economics view which considers them as an engine for market exchange and interactions (Van Alstyne et al., 2016; Parker et…”

“A core firm is usually located at a central or core position within an ecosystem [29,30]; is capable of constructing and sustaining an ecosystem while sharing and integrating innovation resources within the network [31]; enables a mechanism that selects and decides the entry and exist of ecosystem actors [12]; process…”

“In the scientific literature, three perspectives on platforms from the fields of engineering, economics, and organization can be found [38].”

“Gawer and Evans divide platforms according to their principal purpose and identify three different types of digital platforms: transaction platforms, innovation platforms, and integration platforms [34,38].”

“E-commerce ecosystems can be formed around a focal platform that can serve several purposes (i.e., innovation and transaction activities), depending on its type (Evans & Gawer, 2016; Evans & Schmalensee, 2016; Gawer, 2014).”

“Digital platforms are modular architectures with core and boundary components that federate constitutive agents to jointly innovate and compete (Gawer, 2014).”

“We suggest that platform providers could manage the influence of competing platforms for complementary goods provision by managing the indicators in the ecosystem.”

“…in each of the cases considered, the incumbent innovation ecosystem is disrupted by another that boasts a platform broader in its scope, coupled with increased openness of interfaces, which allow more actors to join the milieu to enhance innovation and diversity of capabilities (Gawer, 2014).”

“Without doubt, the Chinese government continued to invest in NEV technologies, and research and development subsidies were more generous in the 863 Program for the “11th” and “12th” Five-Year Plans, which promoted the technological innovation and transformation of PEVs, PHEVs, and FCVs and ensured the continuous upgra…”

“The IS literature has suggested that managing the level of openness of subsystems can have controlling effects in large loosely-coupled networks (e.g. West & O'Mahony (2008)).2 Opening a platform can enhance the diversity and innovativeness of complementors (Gawer, 2014).”

“The economics, on the other hand discusses how to connect demand and supply in order to grow in sustainable manner, create innovation ecosystems and enter new markets [17].”

“Rather than disinterme-diation, digital markets come with new forms of intermediation and new intermediaries, such as digital platforms (e.g. Gawer 2014; Kenney and Zysman 2016; Ramaswamy and Ozcan 2018; see also the contributions by Chimenti 2019; and Ravenelle 2019).”

“(2010), comprising the “conceptual blueprint” on how to integrate complements of third parties, for example by providing interfaces to the platform core (Tiwana 2015b), supporting modularity (Gawer 2014), building on established standards (Simcoe et al.”

“With such an approach, digital platform ecosystems are evolving meta-organizations that coordinate actors, which can innovate and compete, and comprise technologies and associated work practices (Blaschke et al., 2019; Gawer, 2014; Schreieck et al., 2016).”

“(Gawer, 2014, p. 1245) Notably, this conceptualization of platforms regards ‘technology as that by which organization arises as a possibility’ (Beyes, Chun, Clarke, Flyverbom, & Holt, 2022, p. 1003) instead of confining it to a tool that is being used by humans (Beyes et al., 2022).”

“For example, Gawer (2014) considers demand-side economies of scope to be a type of indirect network effect because demand on market side A can affect Data portability is another policy intervention that policymakers have adopted to regulate data-rich platforms.”

“Technically, the platforms driving the ecosystems can be conceptualised as a set of multiple discrete components (Baldwin and Clark, 2000; Gawer, 2014) owned by different partners and interacting through standardised interfaces.”

“All but content providers and end users are “ platforms ” or multi-sided markets (Evans, Hagiu, & Schmalensee, 2006; Gawer, 2014; Rochet & Tirole, 2003).”

“Platform ecosystems can be classified in technology-oriented and market-oriented (Gawer, 2014; Thomas et al., 2014; De Reuver et al., 2018).”

“This research stream has categorised platforms with their regard to the production process scope, and focused on platforms in terms of a vehicle for modularization, such as supply-chain platforms or capability exchange platforms (Gawer 2014).”

“The concepts of digital platforms and their surrounding ecosystems also have become a vibrant research area, ranging from technical designs in the information science literature (Gawer, 2014) to their impact on organizations within the management science literature (Cusumano & Gawer, 2002).”

“Gawer (2014) suggests the classi fi cation into four types: internal platforms, supply-chain platforms, industry platforms, and two-sided platforms.”

“…an ecosystem that proves to be unsuccessful (Iansiti and Levien 2004) or that the global factory duplicates the SME’s domain of activity (Gawer and Cusumano 2002) – today’s collaborator can easily become tomorrow’s competitor and dialogue between the focal firm and SME is critical (Gawer 2014).”

“(Schilling, 2000) At the product level, the principles of modularity give rise to “platform thinking,” an approach to new product development that focuses on the commonality of subsystems to diffuse them across projects (Gawer, 2014).”

“Analogous to the ecosystem perspective, this is achieved by making core assets and interfaces accessible outside of the manufacturing firm and the traditional supply-chain [7] to ecosystems of widely dispersed and heterogeneous developers [e.”

“Thus, a digital platform can enable both sides of the market—including asset manufacturers and asset operators—to cocreate value for mutual benefit [46], [56], as framed in DP1.”

“…are technological architectures that facilitate and simplify the intraorganizational exchange between knowledge seekers and contributors by providing a digital, semipublic 3 space to interact across social and geographical boundaries (Gawer, 2014; Purvis et al., 2001; Thomas et al., 2014).”

“The focal platform plays a dual role: It serves as a two-sided market connecting the application side and the user side (Song et al., 2018) and serves a technology infrastructure for fostering complementary innovations (Gawer, 2014; Luo, 2018).”

“Modularity can also be considered to be the platform’s most pressing technological property [64].”

“These ecosystems serve as fertile ground for many heterogeneous firms and third parties to come together in pursuit of progress (Gawer, 2014).”

“…organizational, and business model novelties, we discuss three key attributes, which are leveraged for effective multi-actor collaboration for shared innovation: (1) Modular Architecture allows reusability of the same core capabilities by different services (Baldwin & Woodard, 2009; Gawer, 2014).”

“Economically, such platforms are often organized as market intermediaries in business-to-con-sumer settings, or as three-sided markets where the income of the platform owner stems from advertising associated with free services (Gawer 2014).”

“Following modern versions of early medieval port cities and more recently phone companies, they do this by creating network effects by creating platforms which serve as two-sided or multi-sided markets (Gawer 2014).”

“The latter are not ‘evolving organizations’ (Gawer 2014, 1240), seeing that they lack essential organizational characteristics such as intentionality, goal orientation and strategic capacity to act.”

“Many authors have pointed out the benefits of platformization in terms of lead time, development cost, product quality, and product variety (Cusumano, Nobeoka, & Kentaro, 1998; Gawer, 2009, 2014; Simpson, Siddique, & Jiao, 2006).”

“In that stream of research, the platform (technology) facilitates exchange between consumers that have not been in transactions before and enables interaction as the interaction takes place by way of the platform (Gawer 2014).”

“Therefore, on the one hand, the B2B platforms, both transaction-based and innovation-based (Gawer, 2014; Gawer and Cusumano, 2014), foster a more profound relationship between the firm and its customers and partners.”