On open innovation, platforms, and entrepreneurship

Abstract

Research Summary In recent decades, two emergent phenomena have jointly transformed the nature and pursuit of entrepreneurship across industries and sectors: open innovation and platformization. Open innovation involves a shift toward more open and distributed models of innovation, while platformization refers to the increasing importance of digital platforms as a venue for value creation and capture. Together, open innovation and platforms have created numerous opportunities for entrepreneurs and their firms—from serving as inputs for innovation for established firms to participating as complementors on existing platforms. While these entrepreneurial opportunities (and conditions) have manifested themselves in rich and varied ways, our understanding of these new forms of entrepreneurship has lagged behind. In this essay, and in this special issue, our objective is to bring a sharper focus on the important research issues and questions that frame open innovation, platforms, and entrepreneurship. Managerial Summary Digital platforms and open innovation environments have unleashed numerous promising opportunities for entrepreneurs, in industries ranging from consumer software, entertainment, and home appliances to auto, health, and energy. To pursue those opportunities, however, entrepreneurs will need to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that facilitate and constrain them. In this essay, we identify and discuss several of these factors and the associated challenges and highlight the need for additional research. We also consider some of the broader contextual factors, including regulatory policies, digitization, and globalization that shape the emerging opportunities.

Ecosystem-specific advantages in international digital commerce

“…Second, a primary motivation for organizing as a platform is to leverage the generative potential of distributed innovators while at the same time benefiting from economies of co-specialization (Nambisan, Siegel, & Kenney, 2018;Thomas et al, 2014). Partner firms not only help to promote a platform's technology, they also can augment it in ways that better meet the immediate demands of their own customers.…”

Context, time, and change: Historical approaches to entrepreneurship research

“…Second, Toms et al demonstrate how historical cases may be used to develop systems-level entrepreneurship theories. Strategic entrepreneurship research is by its charter a field that engages with practice and hence with novel trends (e.g., big data, artificial intelligence), taken-for-granted structural forms (e.g., startups, venture capital), and constructs (e.g., entrepreneurial ecosystems, rapid prototyping) that constitute contemporary practice (Autio et al, 2018;Dushnitsky & Matusik, 2019;Nambisan, Siegel, & Kenney, 2018). Historical cases that illustrate variations in these practices can help researchers generalize about the theoretical categories by which to understand emerging practices.…”

Theorizing Hybrid Models of Peer Production: A Case Study of an Open Collaborative Journalism Platform

“…hierarchy of rights based on experience and skillset; professional versus amateur [4]), and open innovation (e.g. internal and external knowledge flows with both inside-out and outside-in open innovation strategies [12,21]). Thus, WikiTribune's organization includes both professionalism and volunteerism, which both have a distinctive way for controlling and organizing work and its workers [17].…”