L02 A: Gawer, A. (2014). Bridging differing perspectives on technological platforms: Toward an integrative framework.

Question 1

Economic perspective Platforms

Answer 1

Economics 🡪 multi-sided markets 🡪 insights on platform competition.

Economies of scope in demand 🡪 platform provides user with fulfilling multiple needs.

Question 2

Engineering perspective Platforms

Answer 2

Engineering design 🡪 modular technological architectures 🡪 insights on platform innovation.

Economies of scope in innovation 🡪 when the cost of jointly innovating on product A and B is lower than the cost of innovating on A or B independently.

Platform: building blocks, providing an essential function to a technological system – which acts as a foundation upon which other firms, loosely organized in an innovation ecosystem, can develop complementary products, technologies or services.

Question 3

Platform architectures advantages and dis-advantages

Answer 3

Advantages:

Reduced cost of production (e.g. economies of scale)
Shared components between models
Reduced R&D lead times
Reduced systemic complexity
Reprogrammability: Improved ability to update products
Customization by (re)combining components

Disadvantages:

Decreasing distinctiveness
Sub optimization: you need to comply with standard and sometimes to follow the standard you need to build in features you might not need.

Question 4

Findings Platform innovation and competition:

Answer 4

H1. As platform interfaces become more open, more agents will be attracted into the platform ecosystem, and the platform leader will be able to access a larger set of potentially complementary innovative capabilities.

H2. While a large proportion of the platform ecosystem’s agents will innovate in ways that are complementary to the platform, a number of them will start innovating in ways that become com- petitive to the platform.

H3. Emergence of competition from complementors will depend on the governance of the ecosystem, as collaborative governance will increase complementors’ incentives to innovate in platform- enhancing ways.

Moves from internal to supply-chain to ecosystem platforms, the likelihood of competition between constitutive agents of the platform is also likely to increase:

Question 5

Technological platforms can be usefully conceptualized as evolving organizations or meta-organizations that:

Answer 5

(1) Federate and coordinate constitutive agents who can innovate and compete;

(2) Create value by generating and harnessing economies of scope in supply or/and in demand;