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Research Summary: Platforms are often assumed to benefit firms, especially smaller ones, by facilitating access to a broader consumer base and increasing visibility. However, this logic relies on platforms" ability to match consumer preferences to complement characteristics. In addition to this matching mechanism, we posit that platforms also broker consumer attention towards complements, which then compete for this attention. We propose that this attention mechanism is particularly prominent in settings where complement characteristics cannot be observed ex‐ante, and argue that complementors' with larger scale and broader scope are better positioned to capture attention than smaller and less broad ones. We formalize and test this intuition in the context of news aggregators, highlighting the significance of complementors' ability to draw attention in evaluating their benefits from platform participation. Managerial Summary: Small firms are often assumed to benefit most from joining a platform to expand their market reach and visibility. However, this will only be the case if the main function of platforms is to match consumer preferences to product characteristics. We argue that platforms also direct attention towards some products at the expense of others on the platform. This "attention mechanism" is particularly important whenever product characteristics cannot be observed prior to consumption, and we propose that in such settings, larger scale and broader scope of products drive attention towards specific firms on the platform. We test these predictions in the context of online news aggregators, which feature news content by newspapers of different sizes and with different range of articles. We find that indeed large and generalist newspapers benefit most from being on a news aggregators, while small and focused newspapers perform better when they are not featured on the news aggregator at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multisided platforms are new organizing forms that can boost innovation in the healthcare sector by empowering patients as innovators and facilitating the commercialization of innovations by and for patients. However, applying the playbook script for the platform model from other sectors may prove challenging given the distinctive nature of the healthcare services. Drawing on the case of a leading healthcare innovation platform in Europe, this article examines the platform's role in identifying and enabling the development and diffusion of patient innovations. This involves three main roles (community organizer, market matchmaker, and innovation manager) and corresponding orchestration activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platform-based technology ecosystems are new forms of organizing independent actors' innovations around a stable product system. This collective organization is proving superior to traditional, vertically integrated systems in many sectors because of greater 'generativity'--the ecosystem's capacity to foster complementary innovation from autonomous, heterogeneous firms--which extends the usage scope and value of the platform to users. However, greater generativity can also lead to greater variance in the way ecosystem members' contributions satisfy users' needs, and it could potentially hinder the ecosystems' value creation. We draw on collective action theory to examine generativity's impact on user satisfaction and the mechanisms driving it. We argue that products enhancing user satisfaction contribute to a collective, shared asset, the platform system reputation, from which all participants benefit. Thus, generativity has both a positive (system reputation) and negative (free-riding) effect on the ecosystem members' incentives for developing products that enhance user satisfaction. We argue that the negative free-riding effect prevails as the platform system matures and competition with alternative platform systems increases. Using data from the video game industry, we find supportive evidence for the free-riding effect, which generates an average loss in total revenue for first-rate games of about $36.5 million and a drop of about 3.3% in the console's market share. By identifying the conditions that exacerbate free riding in platform ecosystems, our study contributes to the understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of platform ecosystems. It also highlights one feedback mechanism governing collective action in ecosystems and its implications for value creation. Keywords: platform ecosystem * generativity * complement quality * free riding * complementarities * ecosystem governance, Platform-based technology ecosystems are emerging as powerful new ways of organizing interdependent innovation activities (Yoo et al. 2012, Jacobides et al. 2018) in various sectors, including the more traditional ones [...]

Abstract. Multihoming, the decision to design a complement to operate on multiple platforms, is becoming increasingly common in many platform markets. Perceived wisdom suggests that multihoming is beneficial for complement [...]

The digitization of the economy is altering the nature of competition, affecting the fundamental way firms compete in digital markets. In this article, we offer a platform-based view of competition in digital markets, present three distinct types of platform markets, the key elements affecting the value of a platform-based service, and the competitive logic that shape competition in these markets. We introduce the concept of platform identity to delineate the platform's technological and market profile delineating the platform's competitive identity domain and distinguish it from platform size (which reflects the scale of its user and complementor network). We argue that each platform has a unique identity, and comparisons of rival platforms along these two strategic dimensions--platform size and platform identity--help to explain the nature of competition in digital markets and explain the unique competitive dynamics that depart from mainstream competitive theory's predictions. Our framework also helps to identify cases where the market boundaries and competitive domains become contested because of platform competition, leading to market convergence. We discuss how the proposed framework can enrich and extend existing theory on competitive dynamics to the context of digital markets, and offer a foundation for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diffusion of digital technologies has enabled a notable transformation in the firms' boundaries, processes, structures, roles, and interactions. It is now clear that digital transformation is not just a traditional IT back-end process; rather it affects the organization as a whole, redefining strategies, entrepreneurial processes, innovation, and governance mechanisms. This permeation has led to the emergence of new ways of organizing firms' value chains and interfirm relationships, which now increasingly occur in digital ecosystems and marketplaces. The scope of transformation as well as the modalities of value co-generation and delivery are here used to introduce the content of this Special Issue of California Management Review on Digital Transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We ask whether choices aimed at preserving socioemotional wealth (SEW) represent an asset or a liability in family-controlled firms. Specifically, we consider one major SEW-preserving mechanism--having as chief executive officer [...]

While family business research has prominently recognized that family firms are motivated by nonfinancial factors, the literature has remained relatively silent about whether or not these firms are more likely [...]

Research summary: User demand affects the emergence and growth of platform ecosystems through indirect network effects. But how do these effects play out in the strategies of platform providers and complementors as the ecosystem evolves? We study how user preferences for ecosystem innovativeness (complement novelty and quality) and ecosystem size (number of complementors/complements), and demand-based economies of scale, shape the strategic interactions between the platform provider and the complementors in the ecosystem. Using an analytical model, we identify the conditions that give rise to a trade-off between ecosystem innovativeness and size; when (and why) this trade-off generates a tension between value cocreation and appropriation among ecosystem participants; and the strategic implications for ecosystem competitiveness and for the different stages of the ecosystem's evolution. Managerial summary: Managing complementors' incentives is critical for the success of a platform ecosystem. Such incentives may be offered not only for joining the platform, but also for contributing highquality, innovative complements throughout the ecosystem's evolution. In this article, we show that demand-side economies of scale are the driving force of complementors' incentives, and hence the key success factor for platform strategies. The strength of user preferences ultimately determines whether a larger ecosystem can also be more innovative, in which case all ecosystem participants can gain; or if instead there is a trade-off between size and innovativeness, which could also lead to a tension between value co-creation and appropriation among the platform provider and its complementors. The different stages of the evolution of a platform ecosystem call for different strategies that adapt to the evolution of user preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governing a city is arguably one of the most complex management tasks facing organizational leaders. Based on an analysis of Vienna, London, and Chicago, this article demonstrates that city leaders treat cities as ecosystems, structured and governed either as "extended enterprises" where inputs from specialized organizations are coordinated and integrated into the final service or as "platform markets" where direct interactions between third-party service providers and citizens are facilitated by the city leaders. If cities are viewed as the "ecosystem of ecosystems," then successful city governance requires an orchestration approach where leaders choose the appropriate structure and manage the ecosystem dynamically in a constantly changing environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]