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Amid a host of changes to the world of management and work, the concepts of 'workforce ecosystems' and 'HR ecosystems' have concurrently emerged. These frameworks help make sense of the increasingly diverse ways that organizations deliver strategic value using not only their internal resources but also an extended workforce including contingent workers, partner organisations, and technological actors. This has significant implications for the practice and direction of HR professionals and managers, the boundaries of organisations within the ecosystems, and the strategic management of them not to mention questions of leadership, governance, and function. In this panel symposium, we aim to consider the similarities, tensions, and synergies between these concepts, consider the changing role of managers and HR professionals, and consider the future of these ecosystems. We do this through a generative discussion featuring experts from the field of workforce and HR ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this symposium is to bridge the micro and macro perspectives through a strategic leadership perspective. Such integration is essential for a comprehensive understanding of how individual components, interactions, and interfaces within an ecosystem contribute to the larger landscape, as well as understanding how strategic leadership operates within business ecosystems. In essence, the bridge between micro and macro perspectives is a conduit for understanding the dynamics of ecosystems and understanding strategic leadership influences at larger scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-sided platform marketplaces connect at least two groups of customers together, enabling complex value creation and capture systems. They have dominated entire industries over the last decade, attracting billions of users and dollars of capital. The largest of these platforms have plowed their data, labor, and capital investments into artificial intelligence (AI) engines. As yet, these platforms have yet to merge these two ideas together to create new products or marketplaces. When they do, will this reinforce the existing theories on multi-sided platform strategy, or will it require new theories at the intersection of platforms and AI? This Symposium assembles the world's experts on platforms to describe their predictions for how AI will impact the practice and theory of multi-sided platforms. The session will conclude with a discussion among the panelists and audience for a research agenda to guide future efforts in this evolving field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium extends the discourse on the non-linearity in industry evolution by exploring the multitude of uncertainties that characterizes nascent industries and how firms' distinct ways of addressing various uncertainties can dramatically shift the process of industry evolution. Five featured papers discuss the uncertainties associated with technologies, demand, and ecosystems in nascent industries and investigate the changes in evolutionary patterns, innovation trajectories, and knowledge generation. The papers use both quantitative and qualitative methods across different empirical settings, approaching the topic of uncertainty and industry evolution from complementary angles. The Spillover Effect of Innovation Failure in Nascent Industries Author: Hee Yeul (Tom) Kwon; U. of Southern California Author: Hyo Kang; U. of Southern California Exaptation and Technological Evolution: A Study of Carbon Capture Technologies Author: Ho-Wei Hsu; HEC Paris Author: Denisa Mindruta; HEC Paris Following Virtute and Knowledge: New Venture Creation in Nascent Industries Author: Jacopo Manotti; Politecnico di Milano School of Management Author: Silvia Sanasi; Free U. of Bozen-Bolzano Author: Antonio Ghezzi; Politecnico di Milano School of Management The Interplay of Data and Actors in Early Platform Emergence Author: Jack Lewis Fraser; Said Business School Author: Elizabeth J. Altman; U. of Massachusetts, Lowell Author: Pinar Ozcan; Oxford U., Saïd Business School Firms as Influencers: Shaping Industries through Knowledge and Collaboration Author: Mana Heshmati; U. of Washington [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been an explosion of research on business ecosystems of late, the implications for strategic leadership research is rarely investigated. We propose this symposium to address two core questions to advance theory and research on business ecosystems and strategic leadership. First, what role do strategic leaders play in ecosystems' design, development, and evolution, including value co-creation? Second, what are the implications of business ecosystems for the extant strategic leadership theory and research? We bring together a panel of leading scholars to discuss these questions from their own research perspectives and to stimulate a set of questions for future research. We aim to build a vibrant community of scholars interested in these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platform governance is essential to platform success -- let alone a fair division of the surplus that platforms generate. Platforms compete both for final users, and for complementors, participants whose financial success depends on platform uptake. Motivating all sides of the platform to join -- be they dependent on it or not -- is important. As consequence, the question of platform governance, which defines how platforms shape and motivate interactions amongst users, is becoming increasingly critical. Recently, we have seen an upsurge of interest in new, alternative ways of governing platforms, such as by decentralizing decision making or creating completely new organizational forms. Our symposium aims to tack stock of these emerging conversations. In doing so, we hope to advance discussions on novel governance forms. Four distinguished platform scholars will present the state-of-the-art in regard to platform governance, critically reflect on the potential presented by new forms of governance and foreseen barriers, and engage with audience members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystems are groups of independent firms linked through non-generic complementarities that work together to create a customer value proposition. Given the tentative consensus on the definition of ecosystems, research is now shifting to studying an interplay between ecosystem structure and performance. As a field, we wish to know where firms' positions in ecosystems and interdependencies among firms, which underpin ecosystems in the first place, could come from. This symposium unites papers from some of the leading scholars in this emerging field that take a dynamic perspective of how various types of actors (e.g., orchestrators, complementors, component producers, government, and university research centres) shape ecosystem structure and affect firms' performance. We will begin with looking at how ecosystem orchestrators overcome challenges associated with collaborations and investments in innovative start-ups, then take a graph theoretic approach to map patterns of interdependencies that drive acquisition choices by ecosystem members, and subsequently examine the emergence of an ecosystem from a technological discovery to commercialization. Next, we explore strategies complementors deploy as they join platform-based ecosystems and take a closer look at value co-creation and capture between a platform owner and complementors. The (brief) presentations are followed by extensive discussion, between presenters and co-authors, and by moderated Q&A with the audience. Our collective aim is to improve our understanding of the temporal dynamics shaping ecosystem structure and their link to ecosystems' and firms' performance. Orchestrating an Ecosystem: A Temporal Study of Ex-Ante Intentions, Ex-post Actions and Performance. Presenter: Sukhun Kang; London Business School. Presenter: Gary Dushnitsky; London Business School. Ecosystem Interdependencies as Drivers of Acquisitions. Presenter: Natalie Jane Burford; INSEAD. Presenter: Andrew V. Shipilov; INSEAD. Presenter: Nathan Furr; INSEAD. The Emergence of Innovation Ecosystems: Organizational Mutation and Coopetition in Nanotechnology. Presenter: Israel Drori; -. Presenter: Dovev Lavie; Bocconi U. Playing with Platforms: A Complementor Strategy Perspective. Presenter: Elizabeth J. Altman; U. of Massachusetts, Lowell. Presenter: Mary Tripsas; U. of California, Santa Barbara. Value Co-Creation and Capture in Platform Markets: Evidence from a Creative Industry. Presenter: Carmelo Cennamo; Copenhagen Business School. Presenter: Grace Gu; Boston College. Presenter: Feng Zhu; Harvard U. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms benefit by leveraging capabilities and complementarities of others, especially as they increasingly collaborate as conveners and members of business ecosystems. Scholars have used biological ecosystems as an analogy to explore interorganizational relationships for decades, yet the prevalence and increasing importance of business ecosystems across industries has sparked a burgeoning research focus in this area. In this panel symposium, we gather five scholars engaged in ecosystem-related research exploring new structures and organizational considerations from multiple disciplines and methodological domains. The five diverse yet related perspectives consider difficulties and opportunities presented by strategies where organizations interact in ecosystem structures. Though much is understood about ecosystem structures, a wealth of new research is uncovering new variants and introducing new debates that the panel will explore through a moderated, formal, interactive discussion. Discussion topics will include: 1) the nature of new ecosystem forms such as networks of ecosystems, 2) coordination structures in ecosystems, 3) international ecosystems, 4) learning to cooperate in ecosystem structures, and 4) the role of government in innovation ecosystems. By discussing these topics together (actively including symposium participants), we can examine these phenomena through an integrated approach and identify new directions for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When organizations need input into their innovation or production process, they have traditionally been faced with the decision to make the input themselves or buy it through the market. However, rapidly decreasing information costs allow firms to harness external communities that are neither employees of the firm hierarchy, nor traditional contracted market participants such as supply chain partners. We introduce the managed ecosystem governance form in which a central organization engages external communities and also manages them by maintaining some degree of control over community activities. This model is evident in various organizational approaches including multi-sided platforms, crowdsourcing, and the gig economy. Building upon the knowledge-based view of the firm, we argue that these increasingly common governance models offer a wealth of opportunities, but require organizations to adopt a translucent institutional logic that is in-between the traditional closed logic of the firm and open logic of the market. To successfully employ this model, firms must learn to shepherd communities, leverage them without exploiting them, and share intellectual property rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Products often work better when combined with accessories; smartphones work better with cases, chargers, and apps. This research focuses on challenges faced by accessory organizations, which are complementors to powerful platform businesses. Complementors produce products or services that increase the value of other products; multi-sided platforms (MSPs) enable interactions between groups. I study relationships between complementors and MSPs focusing on complementors that are successful mature organizations coping with new relationships with powerful platform businesses. Using an inductive theory-building approach with a three and a half year field-based case study, I explore research questions associated with established organizations joining MSP ecosystems. I study an organization selling products that work with smartphones and other devices, and investigate how an incumbent organization responds to power differential challenges in an asymmetric relationship. I find three-types of complementor-MSP dependencies: 1) technological, 2) information, and 3) values-based. Further, I theorize the process of complementor evolution where complementors traverse three phases of response strategies: 1) compliance-centric, addressing requirements; 2) influence-centric, altering obligatory constraints; and 3) innovation-centric, creating new solutions. This paper outlines how, when, and why an organization transitions through evolution response phases. Additionally, I discuss how these findings extend existing perspectives on interorganizational relationships and dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies that embrace and enable external entities are changing the way firms conduct business and interact with the world around them. As organizations that adopt these concepts grow in profitability and impact, the notions of openness, engagement, interdependence, and co-opetition gain in importance. Further, these approaches frequently lead to tensions within organizations, especially as mature incumbent organizations transition to new business models and execute hybrid strategies with multiple conflicting institutional logics. This paper considers similarities and differences between platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies. We focus on managerial and organizational challenges, such as those of strategic leadership, and explore the questions: What are strategic leadership challenges associated with platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies in the context of incumbent transitions and the management of hybrid businesses? How do these challenges differ from those in traditional closed (non-platform and non-ecosystem) organizations? We discuss theoretical implications, and consider future directions and research opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of disruptive innovation has gained currency among managers even while core concepts remain misunderstood. Likewise, foundational research on disruption has produced extensive citations and provoked vibrant debates, but empirical research in management has not kept pace. Such inconsistencies warrant deeper reflection and provide the impetus for evaluating research on disruptive innovation in management and strategy. We trace disruptive innovation theory's intellectual history, noting both how core principles have crystallized through a process of anomaly-seeking research and how it has evolved from a technology change framework to a more expansive, causal theory of innovation and competitive response. The assessment reveals that while the phenomenon of disruption has not changed, our understanding has as the theory developed and was refined. Finally, to reinvigorate academic interest in disruptive innovation, we propose several new topic areas-performance trajectories, response strategies and hybrids, platform businesses, and innovation metrics-to guide subsequent empirical work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms benefit when they leverage the innovative efforts of others. Today, firms are leveraging communities of developers, users, accessory providers, and others to generate ideas, solve innovation problems, select among various potential solutions, and accomplish other functions that more traditionally have been performed within the boundaries of the firm. This multi-divisional paper symposium seeks to bring together a set of four diverse yet related papers that address questions that firms are confronting as they engage with external communities and crowds to innovate and accomplish some of their most critical tasks. The symposium gathers a group of research scholars approaching this topic from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. Two of the papers present theoretical approaches and two offer empirical research spanning multiple methods. While each paper addresses a different set of questions, together they are interested in: 1) new forms of interactions between firms and external communities, 2) these interactions in the context of innovation and problem solving, and 3) both strategic and organizational perspectives. By presenting and discussing these papers together, and (consistent with the spirit of the papers) actively engaging symposium participants in the discussion, we can examine this phenomenon through a holistic integrated approach and also identify new potential directions for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platform-based businesses and their associated ecosystems are becoming increasingly prevalent in many industries and are an important aspect of the global economy. We propose a multi-divisional symposium that brings together a set of papers and a group of researchers involved in empirical research on various aspects of platforms and ecosystems. Each of these papers examine facets of platforms and ecosystems, and are together interested in (a) how existing theories and concepts from strategy, innovation management, and organizational theory can better illuminate the phenomena of platforms and ecosystems (while at the same time trying to make sense of how the phenomena and insights obtained from the field can refine, reassess, and contribute to existing theories), and (b) how empirical research (specifically field-based research methods) can better answer questions concerning the dynamics of platforms and ecosystems. By presenting and discussing these papers together, we hope to examine the phenomena in a more integrative manner, highlight the complementarities and tensions that emerge from the findings of the different papers, and as a result identify new avenues for research. Coordination of Innovation in Platform-Based Ecosystems. Presenter: David Lopez; U. of Exeter. Presenter: Annabelle Gawer; Imperial College London. When is a Bottleneck Not a Bottleneck? Impediments to Kingpin Value Capture in Business Ecosystems. Presenter: Bilgehan Uzunca; IESE Business School. Presenter: Dmitry Sharapov; Imperial College London. Presenter: Richard Tee; EPFL. "Signaling, Differentiation, and Identity-based Barriers in Platform Evolution". Presenter: Arvind Karunakaran; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Joining an Ecosystem: Organizational Implications. Presenter: Elizabeth J. Altman; Harvard U. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]