Interfirm Exchange and Innovation in Platform Ecosystems: Evidence from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference

Abstract

Platform firms’ success depends on complementary innovation. This paper studies the relation between opportunities for interfirm exchange and complementary innovation. An empirical study of a sample of app developer firms attending Apple’s 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference suggests three findings. First, the opportunity to exchange stimulated innovation in the form of major app updates that received positive consumer feedback. Second, the effects were more pronounced for older and larger firms, potentially because these firms have more experience and resources to leverage exchanges and safeguard against knowledge spillovers. Third, part of the effects may be attributed to learning and collaborations. This paper was accepted by Anandhi Bharadwaj, information systems.

Potentially long-lasting effects of the pandemic on scientists

“…Overall, these findings have important implications for science policy. First, they are consistent with face-to-face interactions and collaborations being an important channel for new ideas [14][15][16] , reinforcing the value of resuming in-person activities. While there could be substantial gains from certain aspects of science shifting online (e.g., virtual seminars reducing travel demands and bridging geographical gaps) 24 , it remains unclear how well virtual tools can facilitate important social functions related to the formation of new ideas.…”

“…Nonetheless, one metric where we might begin to observe some signal is the rate of new co-authorships. Indeed, the pandemic and associated social distancing measures halted many in-person interactions that might otherwise have facilitated the flow of new research ideas and collaborations [14][15][16] . To this end, we examine changes in the rate of new co-authorships using a large-scale publication dataset that includes about 9.5 million articles and preprints published in 2019 and 2020.…”

The Fate of the App: Economic Implications of Updating under Reputation Resetting

“…Following such iOS update, developers often have to update their apps to resolve compatibility issues. Developers might even preview some of the changes due to beta versions and presentations at the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (Förderer 2020). Still, while developers can endogenously decide whether to release a maintenance update in compliance with the new iOS, they have little influence over the extent of issues or potentials introduced by the iOS update and the resulting necessity to update their app.…”

Sustainable Development of the Innovation Ecosystem from the Perspective of T‐O‐V

“…(2) e impact of natural disasters, nonhuman factors, force majeure, and other accidental events on the sustainable development of innovation ecosystem [42] are not regarded. (3) e main variables of technology dimension, organization dimension and value dimension are shown in Table 2. is paper systematically analyzes the dynamic feedback relationship between each key factor and node of innovation ecosystem sustainable development and finally establishes the causality cycle diagram of innovation ecosystem sustainable development system, as shown in Figure 2.…”

“…e innovation ecosystem aggregates diversified participants, recombines the heterogeneous innovation resources in the innovation ecosystem, and transforms individual innovation into cooperative innovation. e innovation entities in the system rely on the synergy of innovation to achieve the goal of cocreating value beyond individual accumulation in a common innovation environment [2,3]. Adner explicitly defines innovation ecosystem as a complementary network of core enterprises, upstream suppliers, users, and downstream suppliers [4].…”