Area: Strategy & Innovation

Committee members: Dr. Marco Ceccagnoli (co-chair), Dr. Chris Forman (co-chair), Dr. Annamaria Conti, Dr. Henry Sauermann, Dr. Alfonso Gambardella

Title: Essays on Platform Ecosystems

Essay 1: Value Co-Creation and Appropriation within Ecosystems

There has been a tremendous growth in the literature on ecosystems over the last decade which is in line with the growth of new business models that increasingly rely on value creation through co-specialization of assets across entities within an ecosystem. However, there is still a lack of an integrated framework that (1) spans across the life cycle of the ecosystem and (2) accommodates complementors that affect and are affected by the ecosystem. The purpose of this paper is to address these concerns by reviewing the extant literature on ecosystems to better understand the current state of research across the phases of the ecosystem and the importance of complementors and their strategies in ecosystem dynamics. The review shall also help with identifying promising areas of future research concerning ecosystems.

Essay 2: Multihoming within Platform Ecosystems: The Strategic Role of Human Capital

Understanding complementors’ decisions to multihome, a strategy in which a complementor chooses to join multiple platforms, is important because it influences market-level outcomes such as the probability that markets with network effects will tip. We provide a novel approach to explain multihoming based on “supply-side” features of complementors such as the possession of a diverse set of cospecialized skills which distinguish complementors as generalists. We find that a demand-side opportunity emerging from consolidation of a competing platform has a positive effect on the propensity to multihome, but only when complementors are generalists. While over time complementors learn some of the knowledge that can be leveraged in competing platforms from their existing home-ecosystem, generalists have an additional advantage in multihoming that is subject to path-dependency.

Essay 3: Platform Multihoming and Complementor Performance: Antecedents and Consequences

Platform based ecosystems have grown considerably over the years. While we know more about direct competition between platforms, less is known about the impact of such competition on complementors. We build a theory based on steering – activities of an incumbent platform owner aimed at retaining complementors in the face of increased competition. We also argue that the effect of such steering on complementor performance could vary based on the complementor’s human capital profile. We test our theories using micro-level human capital data of a sample of complementors from the ERP platform ecosystem. We find that, on average, platform competition improves the performance of complementors. However, complementors specialized in terms of human capital tend to be worse off than others. Further, we find that these results continue to hold even after accounting for multihoming as a potential explanation for differential complementor performance. The study makes a contribution to the literature specific to platform ecosystems as well as the broader area of strategic human capital.