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Elements of platform business and the activities involved .

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Short-message service (SMS) has disrupted several communications ecosystem stakeholders. With this new technology, consumers have adopted new ways to communicate with each other and companies have radically improved their existing processes and ways to deliver their services. Furthermore, SMS has enabled the emergence of machine-to-machine type services. The Disruption Framework is a theoretical model that can be used for identifying the process of technology diffusion from a scientific level to a level of social norms. SMS is found to fit within the model of Disruption Framework. The study reveals that the service has progressed to all levels in the model thus the service has been diffused at an almost maximal manner through the ecosystem. Shifts from one level and an industry to another level can be pinpointed and diffusion into different ecosystem layers can be identified. SMS reached its maturity phase in the early 2000s. However, there are clear indications that novel technologies are starting to disrupt SMS ecosystem stakeholders since early adopters of those new technologies are abandoning SMS.

A platform-based innovation ecosystem links multiple markets and their corresponding stakeholders for joint value creation and innovation around a platform, and it is critical for the platform sponsor to manage the configuration efficiently for maximized value and survival. Through a multi-case study, we propose a configurational framework for platform ecosystems to analyze multi-stakeholder business structures, boundary decisions and their relationships. We define the context as for-profit business networks that leverage a digital platform to create multi-sided market circumstances and to engage partners as well as customers in joint innovation and value creation. Empirically we study five small to mid-sized digital information and communication technology platforms and their ecosystems. The discoveries elaborate on the four characteristic configurations and activities involved in the platform ecosystem management, and show configurational differences between open, semi-open, and closed innovation ecosystems. We propose the value-network configurations for the ecosystem, upstream producer, downstream consumer, and partner driven scenarios. Contradicting the existing literature, we argue that complementarities are created by two different producer actors and the consumption is influenced by two different downstream actors. We also argue that an internal production platform can be considered a platform ecosystem for innovation in the case of the extensive use of external knowledge and resource sources. The results extend the understanding of a platform ecosystem as a multi-layered configuration, and show what are the roles of different functions in the multi-layered structure.