L02 A: Hilbolling, S., Berends, H., Deken, F., & Tuertscher, P. (2020). Complementors as connectors: managing open innovation around digital product platforms.

Question 1

What does the paper investigate?

Answer 1

This paper investigates how firms can coordinate open innovation as a platform strategy for the development of complementary product by independent third parties.

Question 2

Why is it it is necessary to understand how the complexity of potential connections between digital products can be managed to deal with organizational and technical challenges?

Answer 2

With the advent of digital technologies, the development of complementary products by external parties is increasingly organized around digital product platforms. The digital technologies that underlie such platforms enable complements to connect in myriad ways with other products. The sheer amount and variety of complements are challenging to coordinate through bilateral, intensive partnerships, but also arm’s length coordination is likely insufficient when complements provide core value to platform users.

Question 3

Complementors act as connectors by enabling three types of connections. State these three types.

Answer 3

(1) Dedicated complements that connect to a focal platform only (Music Hue)

(2) Bridging complements that connect to a focal platform as well as to other platforms (AutoMate)

(3) Embedding the focal platform within a broader platform with an open-ended set of connections to other products. (IFTTT)

Question 4

What were the implications that they found for managing open innovation with complementors:

Answer 4

(1) Firms that operate in a digitizing world need to orient open innovation activities to increasingly complex connections between platforms and complementary products.
Complementors act as connectors by enabling three types of connections, which extend beyond the dedicated complements mostly suggested in literature on platform ecosystems.

(2) These different types of connections call for a hybrid approach to coordinating open innovation around platforms.
Collaboration around digital product platforms combine arm’s length coordination through open and standardized interfaces with more intensive partnerships that enable deeper integration between complements and platforms.

(3) Connections created by independent third parties go beyond the full technical and organizational control of platform owners, because digital product platforms get increasingly interconnected in an ecology of platforms.