The Dynamics of Digital Platform Innovation: Apple's Strategy to Control Modular and Architectural Innovation in iOS

Curated platforms provide an architectural basis for third parties to develop platform complements and for platform owners to control their implementation as a form of open innovation. The refusal to implement complements as innovations can cause tension between platform owners and developers. The dynamic concerning this control of innovation is not well understood in platform literature. This research attempts to address that gap by using qualitative methods to build narrative networks which analyze 45 examples of contested platform innovation. This approach, informed by empirical data sourced from 4664 blogs, identifies patterned sequences of actions describing tussles across the examples. Mechanisms are then identified, which explain how control is asserted and resisted. The principle contribution of this research is to describe and explain the dynamics of contested innovation on curated digital platforms. In doing so, it uses IS notions of digitalization to challenge traditional understandings of innovation in platform architectures.