Unraveling Platform Strategies: A Review from an Organizational Ambidexterity Perspective

Abstract

Abstract:Platform strategies, which highlight the interdependence in and evolution of business ecosystems, are increasingly relevant for sustainable business models in the digital era. So far, platform research has existed as a fragmented body of insights from different fields, but an integrated theoretical perspective can lead to a more coherent understanding of the research overall. Organizational ambidexterity emphasizes the balance between exploration and exploitation, which is particularly conducive to understanding the sustainability of a firm. Using an organizational ambidexterity perspective, the authors analyze five platform strategies: pricing, openness, integration, differentiation, and envelopment. This paper provides a systematic review of the theoretical and empirical studies in leading management, economics, and information systems journals from 2000 to 2016. The findings show that platform strategies can help platform owners achieve ambidexterity by domain, temporal, and organizational separation. Finally, this paper proposes an agenda for future research.

Exploring Performance Determinants of China’s Cable Operators and OTT Service Providers in the Era of Digital Convergence—From the Perspective of an Industry Platform

“…The strategy of a platform owner may have regulatory implications in the following two ways. First, the strategy may be subject to regulation, including the pricing and M and A strategies of a platform owner [23]. Second, a platform owner can act as a regulator of its platform ecosystem via information, contractual and technical instruments [27].…”

“…The converging video industry is increasingly colonized by established traditional and Internet intermediaries that compete for platform leadership, and become an ecosystem of innovation in which third parties are encouraged to develop complementary products and services [22,23]. The digitalization of the video industry has blurred the traditional entry barriers.…”

A Study on Sustaining Corporate Innovation with E-Commerce in China

“…Yun and Liu (2019) developed a conceptual framework for "open innovation" by examining the previous literature at both a micro and macro level [11]. Other studies also show that ICT and e-marketplaces may be a foundation for corporations to promote innovation [12][13][14][15]. The development of e-commerce in China provides a good opportunity for research in this field.…”

Managing Innovation Paradox in the Sustainable Innovation Ecosystem: A Case Study of Ambidextrous Capability in a Focal Firm

“…-Vice General Manager of Spacesat Therefore, Spacesat has established a top management team to strengthen internal and external organization ties and to gain a coordinated ambidextrous capability [35]. This capability enables the focal firm's two different structural units, that of exploitation and exploration, to complement the advantages of each other and better balance loose and tight coupling innovation methods, so as to maintain the efficiency of cooperation between internal and external organizations.…”

“…Ambidexterity of an organization refers to the capability of adopting two different methods to resolve paradoxical tasks in a complex context [34]. The earliest study on ambidextrous capability was in 1996 and had its roots in innovative firm management [35]. Ambidextrous capability is defined as an organization's ability to excel at using current resources to enable exploitative innovation and develop new opportunities to improve exploratory innovation simultaneously [36,37].…”