Role of Platform Providers in Service Networks: The Case of Salesforce.com AppExchange

Sodam Baek (), Kibae Kim () and Jörn Altmann
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Sodam Baek: College of Engineering, Seoul National University
Kibae Kim: College of Engineering, Seoul National University

No 2014112, TEMEP Discussion Papers from Seoul National University; Technology Management, Economics, and Policy Program (TEMEP)

Abstract: As IT technology advanced, a new style of innovation emerged, in which a leading innovation company invites end-users to its open software service platform. With respect to this type of innovation, a lot of innovation studies were performed to understand the structure of the interaction among users and the platform provider from the perspective of network science. By concentrating only on the internal mechanisms among agents, the previous studies miss to consider innovation through collective intelligence. A platform provider plays an important role in the innovation. In this research, we investigate the structure of a service network with empirical data gathered from Salesforce.com AppExchange and discuss the role of a platform provider in innovation through collective intelligence. Our results suggest that the platform provider led the innovation in the initial period and, then, third party developers became gradually innovation leaders. Our findings are expected to re-orient the research focus from internal mechanisms to the role of platform providers.

Keywords: Software Service Platform; Platform-as-a-Service; Network Analysis; Salesforce.com; Open Innovation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D85 L14 L15 L86 O31 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2014-05, Revised 2014-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cse, nep-ict, nep-ino and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published in Proceedings of the 16th IEEE Conference on Business Informatics (CBI 2014).

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:snv:dp2009:2014112

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