Governing Mobile Service Innovation in Converging Value Networks

In a converging mobile 3G+ services domain, governing the activities of operators, content providers and application developers in a value network is an important business model design issue. While existing studies provide insight into governance mechanisms as authority, contracts and trust, little is known which mechanisms are most suited for the various phases of mobile service innovation. In this paper, we examine what governance mechanisms are used during the development, implementation and roll-out, and commercialization of a service, by analyzing a survey among 96 practitioners and experts in the mobile Internet services domain. We find that authority-based governance is most commonly used in the early stages of developing service concepts and technologies, while trust-based governance is used during implementation, roll-out and commercialization. Contract-based governance is most common during implementation and roll-out. These results provide important clues to mobile business actors on how to design organizational arrangements in converging value networks.