Abstract: Majority of studies in multisided platforms have focused on pricing strategies. We know little about other strategies that differentiate platform markets from other conventional industries. I attempt to fill this gap by studying how platform access restriction, as a regulation mechanism, can affect the platform’s performance. In particular, I argue that as for the crucial role of orchestration among interlinked sides of the market, pursuing restrictive policies for agent´s access leads to an underperforming platform if those policies are not balanced properly on the different sides. Moreover, I assert that if the agents are not price sensitive, the loss of imbalanced restrictive strategies can be mitigated to some extent. I examined my hypotheses in the airport industry and found supportive results for them.

Abstract: Open platform boundary resources, those elements that enable contributions and participation, are strategically critical for platform ecosystem prosperity. However, at the same time, boundary resources make the platform vulnerable to exploitation. Our study of Google Android and five platform forks, expose the strategic design of boundary resources, how the platform forks exploit boundary resources using several micro-strategies – those of forking, hacking, cloning, and substituting – in bundling their platform stack, and how Google has strategically responded to such exploitation. We contribute by developing a theoretical lens on open platform stack and its boundary resources, providing important directions for a resource-based view of open platform ecosystems. Finally, we contribute by providing a holistic theoretical framework to characterize the nature of symbiosis between platform firms.

Abstract: We examine the influence of competition on emerging technology pioneering and following entry. Controlling for firms’ resources and capabilities relevant to the emerging technology (e.g., patents, scientific publications, prior pioneering and following entry experience), we explore the effects of competitors’ comparable resources and capabilities on focal firms’ pioneering and following entry. Drawing on the entry timing and competitive dynamics literatures, we formulate our predictions considering the specific conditions of the emerging technology context – high technological and market uncertainty, legitimacy challenges, etc. Our findings from a study of the U.S. fiber optics industry (1976-1994) illustrate the differential effect of competitors’ technological resources and entry experience on pioneering versus following entry. The findings also show varying strength and directionality of effects of different competitors’ resources.