Platform-based innovation management: Directing external innovational efforts in complex self-organizing platform ecosystems

Modular platforms have become the centerpiece of collaborative value creation in customer-driven platform ecosystems. Platform ecosystems co-create the platform's value proposition and support its market adoption as the more complementors join the ecosystem to supply complementarities, the more valuable the platform becomes to customers due to a greater variety of choice. This poses new requirements on managing innovation in open platform environments. While academic research stresses the relevance of complementary innovation for platform success, it lacks, however, a concrete understanding of how platform operators can direct external innovational efforts in complex self-organizing ecosystems to co-create and deliver value while ensuring the overall quality, reliability, and consistency of the `whole' product. Based on case study results, this paper presents a categorization of control mechanisms currently applied in platform markets, enabling the platform operator to steer external complementary innovation within the context of a platform strategy. From that an overall platform-based innovation management process is developed.