Authors:
Fábio Neves da Rocha
and
Neil Pollock
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh, Business School, 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh and U.K.
Keyword(s):
Digital Platform, Digital Innovation, Generativity, Generification, Enterprise System, ERP.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Databases and Information Systems Integration
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Enterprise Resource Planning
;
Enterprise Software Technologies
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Simulation Tools and Platforms
;
Software Engineering
Abstract:
Increasing competitive pressures are leading companies to innovate through digital platforms. The dominant theme within extant research on innovation in these platforms conceptualises two different processes: Generativity (Tilson et al., 2010; Yoo et al., 2012) and generification (Hanseth and Bygstad, 2015; Pollock et al., 2007). Each of the conceptualisations gives extensive accounts separately, but they have questionable ability to provide a full understanding of innovation in digital platforms when there is a plural occurrence of these processes (Sørensen and Williams, 2002). Drawing on an analysis of rich archival data complemented by interviews reporting five-year relationship between a platform owner and its customer, we revisited underlying assumptions of its processes. We argue that generativity and generification are related to each other in a constant flux in which one fuels the other. In this relation, control has new roles other than as key factor for innovation productiv
ity (cf. Eaton et al., 2015; Yoo et al., 2012), and it is subordinated to the purpose of innovation. As a consequence, innovation purpose seems to constrain the ‘control vs autonomy’ paradox (Lyytinen et al., 2017).
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