This thesis is focusing on three little-explored contextual conditions that are important for a better understanding of digital platform ecosystems: digital platforms in a nascent stage of maturity, digital platforms built by incumbents, and digital platforms embedded in the IoT phenomenon. Thus, the thesis contributes to the question of how established companies navigating nascent digital platform ecosystems in the IoT. The work builds and contributes to the literature on digital platform ecosystems. Three main contributions are made through explorative qualitative research in the form of Delphi and case studies as well as through systematic literature research on the above-mentioned themes: First, the thesis synthesizes important knowledge about the nascent stage of digital platform ecosystems and identifies value co-creation challenges specific to this early maturity stage. Second, given the increasing importance of established companies in the platform discourse, this thesis identifies the intra- and inter-organizational challenges that incumbent organizations face in building digital platform ecosystems, emphasizing the importance of the organizational type in building a platform ecosystem. Third, the dissertation positions platforms in the IoT as a new digital platform instantiation within the scholarly platform discourse and outlines important phoneme-related characteristics that determine value creation.

In an ever more digitized world, it necessary to embed digital technology in business strategy, leading to an overarching phenomenon called the digital business strategy. Accordingly, this thesis sets out to advance the understanding, the digital business strategy concept in general as well as its influence on a company’s performance. At the same time, incumbents are often constrained by path dependencies and inertia as executives tend to make use of prior experiences and favor strategic choices they are familiar with over unfamiliar As a consequence, companies may stick to a specific path which restrains transformational change. Accordingly, the study elucidates the ongoing digital transformation as it manifests itself in the evolution of incumbents’ digital business strategies. In addition, this thesis seeks to derive important implications for business practice, as it helps practitioners to develop a better understanding of digital business strategies, especially considering that digitalization challenges the conventional wisdom of competition. This is particularly important, as with increasing digitalization, tightly integrated digital business strategies will be among the biggest determinants of a company’s future success. In einer immer stärker digitalisierten Welt ist es wichtig digitale Technologien in die Geschäftsstrategie eines Unternehmens einzubetten, was zu einem übergreifenden Phänomen führt, das als digitale Geschäftsstrategie bezeichnet wird. Dementsprechend zielt diese Arbeit darauf ab, das Verständnis des Konzepts der digitalen Geschäftsstrategie im Allgemeinen sowie dessen Einfluss auf die Performance eines Unternehmens zu verbessern. Gleichzeitig sind etablierte Unternehmen oft durch Pfadabhängigkeiten und Trägheit eingeschränkt, da Führungskräfte dazu neigen, auf frühere Erfahrungen zurückzugreifen und strategische Entscheidungen, mit denen sie vertraut sind, gegenüber unbekannten Optionen zu bevorzugen In der Folge verharren Unternehmen auf einem bestimmten strategischen Pfad, was transformatorischen Wandel hemmt. Dementsprechend beleuchtet die Studie die laufende digitale Transformation und wie diese sich in der Entwicklung der digitalen Geschäftsstrategien etablierter Unternehmen manifestiert. Darüber hinaus versucht diese Arbeit, wichtige Implikationen für die Unternehmenspraxis abzuleiten, da sie Praktikern hilft, ein besseres Verständnis für digitale Geschäftsstrategien zu entwickeln, insbesondere in Anbetracht der Tatsache, dass die Digitalisierung die konventionelle Weisheit des Wettbewerbs herausfordert. Dies ist besonders wichtig, da mit zunehmender Digitalisierung eng integrierte digitale Geschäftsstrategien zu den größten Determinanten für den zukünftigen Erfolg eines Unternehmens gehören werden.

The Internet’s emergence has significantly changed how people, communities, and societies behave, interact, and live. Today, people are accustomed to fulfilling their needs by taking advantage of giant online places for, e.g., the exchange of goods, video streaming, or social interaction. A driving force within this powerful development is represented by the growing diffusion of digital technologies. Enabled by technological advances, nearly every artifact is or can be equipped with digital technologies. With the increasing digitization and hybridization of physical objects established innovation and value commercialization logics are brought into question. Recapitulating today’s prominent players, such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple, etc., highlights the emergence of a new ecosystem philosophy in practice in which diverse third-party contributors are orchestrated via a digital platform and carefully considered in the core firms’ innovation activities. To shed light on this complex phenomena, this dissertation explores, first, the ecosystem concept and its particular relation to information systems, second, investigates the specific situation of industrial-age manufacturing contexts characterized by a physical core product that cannot be digitally substituted and, third, focusses on the specific nature of digital platform ecosystems to distill respective dimensions and characteristics.

Despite recent advances in our understanding of how innovation and entrepreneurship impact the creation and appropriation of value, numerous questions remain unanswered. This volume draws together scholars working at the forefront of entrepreneurship-, strategy-, and innovation-related domains to explore these questions.

To succeed in the face of disruptive competition, companies will need to harness the power of a wide range of partners who can bring different skills, experience, capacity, and their own networks to the task. With the advent of new technologies, rapidly changing customer needs, and emerging competitors, companies across more and more industries are seeing their time-honored ways of making money under threat. In this book, Arnoud De Meyer and Peter J. Williamson explain how business can meet these challenges by building a large and dynamic ecosystem of partners that reinforce, strengthen, and encourage innovation in the face of ongoing disruption. While traditional companies know how to assemble and manage supply chains, leading the development of a vibrant ecosystem requires a different set of capabilities. Ecosystem Edge illustrates how executives need to leave notions of command and control behind in favor of strategies that will attract partners, stimulate learning, and promote the overall health of the network. To understand the practical steps executives can take to achieve this, the authors focus on eight core examples that cross industries and continents: Alibaba Group, Amazon.com, ARM, athenahealth, Dassault Systèmes S.E., The Guardian, Rolls-Royce, and Thomson Reuters. By following the principles outlined in this book, leaders can learn how to unlock rapid innovation, tap into new and original sources of value, and practice organizational flexibility. As a result, companies can gain the ecosystem edge, a key advantage in responding to the challenges of disruption that business sees all around it today.

Digital transformation is not about technology--it's about change. In the rapidly changing digital economy, you can't succeed by merely tweaking management practices that led to past success. And yet, while many leaders and managers recognize the threat from digital--and the potential opportunity--they lack a common language and compelling framework to help them assess it and guide them in responding. They don't know how to think about their digital business model. In this concise, practical book, MIT digital research leaders Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner provide a powerful yet straightforward framework that has been field-tested globally with dozens of senior management teams. Based on years of study at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), the authors find that digitization is moving companies' business models on two dimensions: from value chains to digital ecosystems, and from a fuzzy understanding of the needs of end customers to a sharper one. Looking at these dimensions in combination results in four distinct business models, each with different capabilities. The book then sets out six driving questions, in separate chapters, that help managers and executives clarify where they are currently in an increasingly digital business landscape and highlight what's needed to move toward a higher-value digital business model. Filled with straightforward self-assessments, motivating examples, and sharp financial analyses of where profits are made, this smart book will help you tackle the threats, leverage the opportunities, and create winning digital strategies.

It is the fundamental challenge of the high-tech sector: A firm must innovate internally to succeed-yet its success may equally depend on corresponding innovations by external firms. Whether a company develops a ubiquitous operating system or the software that runs on it, a VCR or the movies we play on it, every participant in a high-tech network is vulnerable to the innovative moves of its partners and competitors. Yet, in spite of this perilous situation, some firms have developed strategies that have made them industry powerhouses and world-class innovators. How? By becoming platform leaders -companies that provide the technological foundation on which other products, services, and systems are built. Platform leadership is the Holy Grail of high-tech industries, but it is difficult to achieve. In Platform Leadership , high-tech strategy experts Annabelle Gawer and Michael A. Cusumano reveal how Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco, as well as companies including Palm and NTT DoCoMo, have orchestrated industry innovations to support their products-and, in the process, established dominant market positions. Based on these in-depth case studies and on incisive analysis, the authors present their Four Levers Framework for designing and implementing a successful platform strategy-or for improving an existing strategy: 1. Determine the scope of the firm : Is it preferable to create product complements internally or let the "market" produce them? 2. Design product technology strategically : What degree of modularity is appropriate? Should product interfaces be open or closed? What information should leaders disclose to outside firms? 3. Shape relationships with external complementors : How can the company balance competition and collaboration with outside players? 4. Optimize internal organizational structures : What processes and systems will allow the company to manage internal and external conflicts of interest most effectively? For executives, strategists, and entrepreneurs in many high-tech arenas, this book shows how firms can orchestrate innovation to ensure their own competitive futures-and drive the evolution of their industry. AUTHORBIO: Annabelle Gawer is Assistant Professor of Strategy and Management at INSEAD. Michael A. Cusumano is the Sloan Management Review Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School, editor-in-chief and chairman of the board of the Sloan Management Review , and coauthor of the bestseller Microsoft Secrets .