Openness in platform ecosystems: Innovation strategies for complementary products

Javier Cenamor and Johan Frishammar

Research Policy, 2021, vol. 50, issue 1

Abstract: Innovation strategies in complementary product markets come with a dilemma: Platform sponsors must concede third parties autonomy to innovate to make a platform successful, but a platform sponsor must also participate in the complementary product market to make the platform grow, thus acting as a competitor to third parties. We examine the performance outcomes of four innovation strategies based upon combinations of development and commercialization activities, i.e., the proprietary, outbound, inbound and third-party strategies, and their evolution over time. Data was collected from a panel of 4,857 video games for the seventh generation of video consoles in the United States. The findings contribute to research on platform strategy, open innovation, and ecosystem management by highlighting the different performance outcomes of innovation strategies that co-exist in the same platform ecosystem at the same time. The findings emphasize that decisions on appropriate innovation strategies in platform ecosystems are much more complex than they have previously been portrayed as, through the traditional dualities of open or closed, platform sponsors or third parties, or first or subsequent strategies.

Keywords: Platform strategy; Open innovation; Ecosystem management; Innovation strategies; Inbound; Outbound (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733320302237
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:50:y:2021:i:1:s0048733320302237

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2020.104148

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().