Managing Business Model Objectives through Platform Strategies
A Case Study of the Google Android Ecosystem
Karthik Jayaraman
Department of informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
Keywords: Software Ecosystems, Competing Values Framework, Android, Information Infrastructures, Platforms.
Abstract: The goal of this research is to study how organizations achieve and balance their conflicting organizational
objectives with the help of dynamic platform strategies. This is done by analyzing the Android platform
where the translation of the organizational objectives of the platform controller Google into its platform
strategies is examined through a series of cases. The analysis is done through the lens of the competing
values framework where changing organizational goals of platform controllers are mapped and understood
through the enactment of their platform strategies.
1 INTRODUCTION
Cross disciplinary research in the fields of
evolutionary psychology, biology and neuroscience
has led to the understanding that people are driven
by four biologically determined needs that can be
used to describe all human behavior. These are the
drives to bond, to learn, to acquire, and to defend
(Lawrence and Nohria 2002). Like human beings, an
organizations business model should propogate
objectives such as creating new innovation,
facilitating collaboration, controlling the evolution
of a product or platform and compete successfully in
the industry (Quinn et al 2010). These values are not
at harmony often and can be conflicting most of the
time. The dominance of certain values over others
and the conflict in values are determined by
organizational goals and various forces in the
industry (Porter 1979).
Companies like Google that play the role of a
platform controller have to constantly adapt their
organizational values to survive in the market place.
Android is among the fastest evolving platform and
is competing with other platforms to become the
dominant design. Innovativeness of the platform has
led to the attraction of an early install base, which is
critical to the success of these platforms. The
organizational value creation through innovation is a
key value to drive growth. To become the dominant
design and increase the pace of innovation
companies have transitioned their strategy from
closed products to platform centric ecosystems. This
model of dealing with complexity and accelerating
innovation by building an ecosystem is achieved
through the process of open innovation; a strategy
where firms use external as well as internal ideas
and internal and external paths to market, as they
look to advance their technology (Chesbrough,
2006).
Once an organization decides to make its
platform available to entities outside its boundary, it
creates a software ecosystem (Bosch 2009). Due to
the global diaspora of knowledge workers, the
knowledge and skill sets required to create new
innovation is often not present within the firm's
boundaries; hence firms leverage the global talent
pool for exploration activities through open
innovation. Hence innovation in mobile information
infrastructure ecologies such as Android is no longer
the sole responsibility of the platform owners but a
shared responsibility of various stakeholders such as
app developers, handset manufacturers, content
providers and mobile carriers. The design and
evolution of these information infrastructure
ecologies impact both the platform owners and the
various stakeholders who are part of the ecology.
Hence the organizational value of collobration by
managing stakeholder interests is one of the key
determinants of the success of these platforms
(Selander, Henfridsson and Svahn 2010).The
concept of generativity is the system’s capacity to
produce unanticipated change through unfiltered
contributions from broad and varied audiences
215
Jayaraman K.
Managing Business Model Objectives through Platform StrategiesA Case Study of the Google Android Ecosystem.
DOI: 10.5220/0004775702150222
In Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design (BMSD 2013), pages 215-222
ISBN: 978-989-8565-56-3
Copyright
c
 2013 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

(Zittrain 2008). The generative ability of mobile
platform’s such as Android to create new
functionality through interfaces such as API's is a
lead determinant of the platform becoming the
leader (Koski & Kretschmer 2007) by attracting an
early installed base. Using generativity to drive the
organizational value of competition can assist in
platforms becoming a dominant design.
The goal of this paper is to analyze how platform
controllers like Google acheive their organizational
objectives to innovate, control, compete and
collaborate through their platform strategies and
how they manages strategic tensions between
platform creation and control, and simultaneous
collaboration and competition with various
stakeholders in the ecosystem. Four cases each
representing an organizational objective is analyzed
with the help of competing values framework and
information infrastructure theory and various
generalizations are drawn from the discussions. This
research aims to contribute to the existing field of
organizational strategy, information infrastructures,
platforms and ecosystems research.
2 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE
The invention and rapid adoption of large complex
systems such as mobile platforms and the Internet
poses several challenges, which can be effectively
addressed by learning from existing well established
large scale infrastructures such as railroads and
highways. Information infrastructures are complex
systems that are shared, continuously evolving, open
for interconnections, based on standards and
heterogeneous installed bases (Hanseth and
Monteiro 1998). The study of Information
Infrastructures promotes the understanding of the
design and interaction of manyInformation Systems
and components that interact with each other to
produce a functioning infrastructural backbone.
Mobile platforms such as the iOS and Android
exhibit the traits of information infrastructures and
are a sum of their parts as they contain various
separate systems such as the kernel, modules,
interfaces and apps and hence requires a holistic
perspective for analysis. The control of the evolution
of Information Infrastructures is often distributed
and negotiated due to their complexity, hence a key
challenges in the design of information
infrastructures is in dealing with negotiations
between control and generativity in the evolution of
the Information Infrastructure. The concept of
generativity is the system’s capacity to produce
unanticipated change through unfiltered
contributions from broad and varied audiences
(Zittrain 2008). Some of the key drivers of
generativity are leverage, adaptability, ease of
mastery, accessibility and transferability. Leverage
of a generative system indicates how extensively a
system leverages a set of possible tasks to create
value for the user.
The greater the functionality of a system the
greater is its ability to produce change and be
generative. Adaptability of a generative system is
determined by how easy it is to extend or modify the
system to broaden its use. Leverage and Adaptability
are closely linked in the case of mobile information
infrastructures. Ease of mastery determines the
easiness for different types of users to understand,
adopt and adapt the technology. The concept of
accessibility is determined by ease of access to a
technology. Barriers to accessibility are factors such
as expense of producing and hence consuming the
technology, taxes, regulations associated with its
adoption or use, and the secrecy its producers adopt
to maintain scarcity or control (Zittran 2008).
Transferability indicates the easiness with which the
changes in the technology can be communicated. An
information infrastructure is considered fully
transferable if the adaptation of the technology by
highly skilled users can be easily communicated to a
user with lesser skills and know-how of the
technology.
2.1 Competing Values Framework
The competing values framework (CVF) is a
strategic analysis framework that is useful in
understanding organizational strategy and its
effectiveness (Quinn et al 2010). The framework
also assists in the recognition of guidelines that can
assist in the management of relationships,
congruencies, and contradictions among the various
aspects of organizations (Quinn & Cameron 1983).
Organizational strategy with the help of CVF can be
analyzed through four quadrants each denoting a
value of the firm. CVF describes that organizations
are structured around two basic opposing needs; the
need for flexibility and autonomy versus the need
for control and stability; and the focus on internal
concerns versus responsiveness to the external
environment. These values represent competing
assumptions of the firms beliefs and strategy. Being
successful in the collaborate quadrant entails
creating and sustaining commitment and cohesion.
Collaboration deals with open communication,
which entails a deep understanding of the concerns
Third International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design
216

of various stakeholders. Collaborators perform both
exploration and exploitation activities with
stakeholders within and outside the boundaries of
the firm. Collaborators manage intra and inter
organizational conflict and promote innovation
(Quinn et al 2010). The community created through
colloboration shares beliefs, competencies, vision
and values. Being successful in the control quadrant
entails establishing and maintaining stability and
continuity. The management of the control quadrant
deals with compliance of rules and regulations.
Control quadrant ensures performance, efficiency
and effectiveness. Compete quadrant deal with the
compete actions of the organization. This deals with
improving productivity and profitability of the
organization.
The understanding of the external environment is
crucial for planning, goal setting and designing work
processes in this quadrant. The strategies are driven
by aggressive competition, markets changes, profits
and speed. Stakeholders in this quadrant must
constantly manage performance through objectives
and use iterative mechanisms to quickly initiate or
cease initiatives. The goals of the create quadrant are
to rapidly create the necessary innovation, adapt to
change and acquire the necessary support. The key
skills required in this quadrant are identifying trends,
differentiating from the competitor, encouraging
new ways of thinking, starting new ventures,
extrapolating emerging opportunities and promoting
innovation. The quadrants of the competing values
framework represent tensions that organizations face
in creating and managing their strategies.
Organizations possess varying degrees of the values
represented in the quadrants.
3 METHOD
This research is based on a detailed case study of the
Google Android platform. The study of how
platform controllers achieve their organizational
objectives through their platform strategies and
manage strategic tensions in the ecosystems requires
a case that provides different perspectives on the
mentioned aspects of study to compare and contrast
the various values in the competing values
framework. The organizational and platform strategy
processes of Google and their impact on the
ecosystem can be seen as extreme cases (Yin 2009).
The studied cases are paradigmatic of some
phenomenon of interest (Gerring 2007). To highlight
the challenges involved in managing platform
strategies, a case study approach of (Gerring 2007;
Yin 2009) was followed with a specific focus of
studying organizational and platform strategies of
Google and the Android ecosystem.
3.1 Data Collection
The data for the case studies in this research is based
on various sources such as documents, website
interviews and nonparticipant observations in
communities. Secondary data available on the
internet is a source of diverse, abundant and rich
data material that exceeds the diversity of data that
can be collected from direct interviews (Romano et
al 2003; Ghazawneh and Henfridsson 2011).The
data that were collected represents official press
releases from Google related to Android, relevant
messages from Android mailing lists that describe
issues related to platform strategies and generative
mechanisms were identified.
The collected data described various issues
related to organizational values and platform
strategies and how the stakeholders reacted to the
implementation of the various strategies. The study
of the field of Platform based ecosystems requires
large volumes of data to understand the relationship
between the different actors, their actions and the
motivations for their actions (Ghazawneh and
Henfridsson 2011).The secondary data for this
research is representative of the period between
January 2009 and January 2013, where some of the
key issues described in this research became a cause
of major concern with the growth and proliferation
of the Android ecosystem. Data from multiple
sources can assist in generating various
generalizations and help in improving data quality
(Soy 1997).
3.2 Data Analysis
This collected data was then analyzed with the help
of Romano et al’s (2003) methodology for analyzing
web based qualitative data. The Romano et al’
method is based on a three-step approach to data
collection and analysis of Internet-based qualitative
data, namely: elicitation, reduction and visualization.
In the first step, elicitation, specific terms that are of
interest to this research from the framework such as
“Android collaboration”, “Android innovation”,
“Android ecosystem control” were fed into popular
search engines such as Google and Bing and
specialized online search engines such as board
tracker and omgili that track discussions in mailing
lists and the resulting data was captured in a QDA
tool. Online observations on the evolution of the
Managing Business Model Objectives through Platform Strategies - A Case Study of the Google Android Ecosystem
217

Android is aimed at collecting relevant data from
natural settings, hence non-participant observations
in mailing lists and discussion boards discussing
Google’s Android strategy provided useful data for
this research. The elicited data was then saved in a
Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) tool. Once the data
was stored in the tool, some of the key themes in the
data were identified. This was done with the help of
word frequency analysis and a thorough literature
review. Word frequency analysis provides a
complete list of all the words that occur in the
collected data material and the number of times they
appear in the text. The analysis of the collected data
through word frequency counts helped in deriving
inferences about the subjects of importance. The
result of the word frequency analysis and literature
review was the discovery of some of the key themes
in the data such as“licensing”, “open handset
alliance” and “release cycles”.
An initial set of codes were then created to
structure the data. The elicitation process led to the
creation of a large research data set, some of the key
concepts relevant to this research were identified
such as platform control, agility in release intervals,
open handset alliance. These concepts were then
investigated in detail.In the second step, reduction,
the large data set that was built during the elicitation
process was reduced to fit the identified themes.
Some of the key concepts identified in the elicitation
step such as “licensing”, “release process”, “app
blocking” and “fragmentation” were further
investigated. The reduced data was further coded to
identify the sequence of events and actors based on
the themes that were discovered and evolved from
the literature review and investigation of the initial
data set. In the visualization step the various
organizational objectives and their acheivement
through platform strategies and information
infrastructure mechanisms are identified and
summarized the discussion section. The strategies
are summarized as four cases. The visualization
process also led to the identification of the key
factors that drove the organizational strategy in a
mobile software ecosystem, which were further
expanded upon and analyzed in section 5 of this
research.
4 FINDINGS
From the time of release of first Android based
phone to today, Google has been able to rapidly
scale its platform, user base and other ecosystem
components. One of the key drivers of Google’s
growth is its ability to manage its strategic initiatives
around innovation, collaboration, quality
management and using the platform and its
ecosystem components as a way to compete in the
market place. In the below section, four key cases
from the collected data representing the above
mentioned strategies are described.
Case I: Platform licensing decisions
Google adopted the Apache licensing scheme during
the release of the Android platform to create provide
access to the code base for a wide variety of
audience. Andy Rubin, the head of the Android
project at Google describes the reason for adopting
the apache license as
“We built Android to be an open source mobile
platform freely available to anyone wishing to use it.
In 2008, Android was released under the Apache
open source license and we continue to develop and
innovate the platform under the same open source
license -- it is available to everyone at: http:/
/source.android.com. This openness allows device
manufacturers to customize Android and enable new
user experiences, driving innovation and consumer
choice.”
Case II: Design of the open handset alliance
The open handset alliance is a networked model of
collaborative innovation where Google engages with
various stakeholders in the ecosystem. The open
handset alliance assists stakeholders such as device
manufacturers, content providers, semiconductor
companies and operators in adopting the Android
platform. Andy Rubin the head of the Android
project at Google commented
“Despite all of the very interesting speculation
over the last few months, we're not announcing a
Gphone. However, we think what we are announcing
-- the Open Handset Alliance and Android is more
significant and ambitious than a single phone. In
fact, through the joint efforts of the members of the
Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will be the
foundation for many new phones and will create an
entirely new mobile experience for users, with new
applications and new capabilities we can’t imagine
today.”
Case III: Managing fragmentation
The flexible licensing scheme of Android allowed
for the platform to be modified in many different
ways and did not require the modifications to be
Third International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design
218

contributed back to the creators of the platform. This
led to the forking of the project into various
derivatives. Chris Roland a commentator on Android
describes the issue of fragmentation as
“Fragmentation of a operating system is nothing
new one need only look at what has happened with
Linux to see a great example of how this can occur.
Fedora and Ubuntu are both Linux, they both have a
Linux kernel, and are for the most part compatible
with each other, but not entirely. Applications
designed for one will not easily run on the other
unless recompiled. Android is the same, but worse.
Not only do developers have to contend with
different versions of Android between 2.x, 3.x and
now 4.x, but not all Androids of the same major
version are the same developers have to contend
with OEM customisations and issues as well.”.
Case IV: Platform release processes & leveraging
ecosystem components
The Android team uses an agile way of product
development release. Since its beta release in
November 2007, Google has launched over thirty
versions of the Android OS. Andy Rubin the head of
the Android project describes the agile release
strategy as a way to compete in the market
“We were at a feverish place post 1.0. 1.0 felt to
me more like an 0.8 - it was pushed out for
Christmas. We subsequently got it up to the spec that
the industry expected it to be. We saw a rapid release
cycle to basically catch up with the industry, and
now I feel pretty much caught up. So any new
releases aren't going to be catch-up releases, they're
going to be releases that are focused on
innovation. “
5 DISCUSSION
Based on the findings in the previous section, it can
be observed that Google tries to balance conflicting
values and organizational interests during the
evolution of the Android platform. In the create
quadrant one of the key challenges is to facilitate the
necessary innovation and adapt to changes in the
industry. Organizations have to cultivate strategies
that facilitate flow of innovation and new ideas that
can help the organizations innovate.
For the successful evolution of a platform, it
must balance the introduction of new artifacts,
processes, and actors but in the same time offering
the flexibility to support scaling and further
evolution of the platform (Tilson, Sorensen and
Lyytinen 2011). As seen in case 1 in the findings
section, the open licensing adopted by Google for its
Android platform enables users access to the code
base enabling them to modify and change the
platform in new innovate ways, it also allowed
commercial use of the platform as the licensing
scheme allowed for the modification of the platform
without having to commit the changes back to the
platform controllers. One of the challenges in the
create quadrant is the bootstrap problem. A
platform’s value is realized when a large number of
users use a platform, hence platform controllers have
to find ways to attract early users to use the
platform. This can be difficult as platform
controllers have to often address the needs of these
early users before having a complete design of their
platform (Hanseth and lyytenen 2010). The flexible
licensing, killer apps and tools such as the SDK
allowed for early users to understand the technical
architecture and implement the necessary changes to
adopt the platform and make it useful. As seen in
case 3 in the findings section, the challenges of the
control quadrant have to do with the quality aspects
of the strategy. Complimenters of a platform need to
be governed in a way where both platform
controllers and complimenters create and extract
value from the platform. The openness aspects of the
create quadrant helped bootstrap the platform by
attracting early users but also lead to the forking and
fragmentation of the platform and its ecosystem.
End users and competing organizations fork the
platform and thereby split the platform resources and
its ecosystem. To control the platform effectively,
the platform owner constructs new platform designs,
secures platform control through agreement ,
increases knowledge heterogeneity through
distribution channels, and counteracts foreign
boundary resources designed to infringe on the
platform (Ghazawneh and Henfridsson 2010). Forks
of the Android platform do not receive the latest
updates of the platform released by Google, which
might lead to critical security and quality issues.Due
to the emergence of dozens of forked versions of the
Android platform, the creation of an additional
clause in the Android SDK’s terms of service
enabled Google to control and act on third parties
that fork the platform.Due to the phenomenon of
increasing returns, the more a standard is diffused,
the greater its value.
A platform standard can also be used as a
strategic tool to decide whether a particular product
is compatible with competitor’s products (Katz and
Shapiro1995). Forking can create incompatible
versions and could hamper the long term
Managing Business Model Objectives through Platform Strategies - A Case Study of the Google Android Ecosystem
219

sustainability and quality of the platform and its
ecosystem (Krogh and Spaeth 2007). Google created
the Android compatibility definition document ,
which details the software and hardware
requirements to comply to the specifications of a
compatible Android device.
Once a complimentor or a competitor creates an
Android compatible product they will have to use
the compatibility test suite as an aid to compatibility
during the development process.Organizations such
as Google have to thus balance their quest for
platform growth with enforcing quality and
standardization in the ecosystem. Companies that are
part of an industry segment are encapsulated in an
ecosystem of suppliers, customers, partners,
competitors, suppliers of substitute products or
services and potential new entrants that can
challenge the status quo (Popp and Meyer 2010).
Hence colloborating with various stakeholders is a
key organizational value that determines the success
of a platform controller. The values of the
collaborate quadrant are determined by actions such
as fostering collective effort, building cohesion and
teamwork and managing conflicts in the ecosystem.
The collaboration is driven by a shared aims, values
and expertise. One of the key challenges of a mobile
platform is the challenge of install base cultivation.
A rapid establishment of a large installed base can
help companies become the platform standard of
choice (Besen and Farrell 1994). Rival firms seek to
exceed consumers' expectations as the size of the
installed base determines the choice of platform
standard, hence industries with network effects
wittiness an intense early competition as a quick
early lead can determine the outcome of the race and
the ones that follow the platform leader eventually
end up becoming obsolete.
As seen in case 2 in the findings section, Google
created a collaborative model of innovation through
the open handset alliance, where complimentors in
the ecosystem could work with Google in shaping
the Android platform. The networked model of
innovation enabled various stakeholders such as
device manufacturers, content creators and others to
provide inputs to the innovation process and build a
platform for shared vision and innovation, which
assists in the deployment of Android on various
devices contributing to the build up of a rapid install
base. Stakeholders could customize new releases of
the platform to suite their needs and colloborating in
the design and development process enables an
easier adoption of the platform and assists in
planning ahead.When information infrastructures
such as Android grow in the creation phase due to
bootstrapping and aspects such as openness, the
platform controllers have to deal with unforeseen
and diverse demands and manage these demands in
the design and technical architecture of the platform.
This is defined as the adaptability problem of
information infrastructures (Hanseth and lyytenen
2010). The open handset alliance acts as a forum to
evolve complex relationships with the various
stakeholders, who are some times direct competitors.
The adaptations that a platform undergoes through a
series of negotiations in forums like the open
handset alliance are determined by socio-technical
motivations and can be understood by analyzing the
significant changes that a platform undergoes, which
are often infrequent, discontinuous, and intentional
(Tilson, Sorensen and Lyytinen 2011). Keystones or
platform controllers like Google have to balance two
key activities to be successful, the first is to create
value within the ecosystem and the second is to
share the value with other participants in the
ecosystem. Unless a keystone finds a way of doing
this efficiently, it will fail to attract or retain
members (Iyer et al 2006). Hence the open handset
alliance helps cultivate install base by acting as a
forum for creation of new innovation and facilitation
of Android compatability and drives platform
standardization through ensuring a consistent
experience for developers, manufacturers and
consumers.
The core competence required by an organization
in the compete quadrant is product differentiation
through rapid innovation, agility and lockin
mechanisms. Innovation in a platform ecosystem is
characterized by simultaneous competition and
cooperation (Walley 2007), where the relationships
between the members are actively shaped by the
stakeholders. In such ecosystems, the competitive
position of a firm participating in the ecosystem is
measured through its relationships to other
participants in the ecosystem (Selander, Henfridsson
and Svahn 2010). As seen in case 4 in the findings
section, while Google and Apple directly compete
against each other through their platforms, they
colloborate and leverage each others platform for
their ecosystem components. Apple uses Google
maps as its maps and navigation system but Google
released a version of its maps app with diminished
capabilities for the iOS version thereby creating a
locking in end users to the Android platform.
The existence of strong network effects and
increasing returns promotes a single or a small set of
platform standards being adopted in an industry
(Bekkers and Martinelli 2010). Hence agility
through short release cycles to gain market share by
Third International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design
220

a rapid buildup of install base is key to becoming the
dominant design. Google uses short release intervals
to introduce new innovations in the platform, while
most of these releases are backward compatiable
some versions are not and this leads to
fragmentation of the platform. Hence balancing
competing organizational values of colloboration
which is enacted through sharing and networked
innovation with the organizational value of
competition which is enabled through agilie
innovation and lockin’s is crucial for platform
controllers in becoming the dominant design.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The goal of this research was to analyze how
organizations such as Google achieve their
objectives through the enactment of platform
strategies and manage strategic tensions in the
ecosystem. Based on the discussions in the previous
section, it is evident that in order to deal with the
changes in the industry and counter market forces,
organizations such as Google have to balance radical
new innovation with incremantal sustaining
innovation through managing change that is new,
innovative, unique, and transformational with small
incremental change that drives efficiency,
predictability, and continuity through their open
innovation strategy. This can help platform
controllers become the dominant design, but to
sustain their posistion, platform controllers have to
also balance their short term need for speed and
agility with a long term focus on developing their
ecosystem by controlling the pace of innovation.
Hence being dynamic and balancing the various
organizational values over time can yield desirable
results. The strength of the platform lies in the
diversity of the stakeholders participating in its
ecosystem, when engaging in an ecosystem the
organizational value collaboration takes greater
importance. Platform controllers have to constantly
shape their relationship with the various
stakeholders to be successful and shape it in a way
that everyone in the ecosystem benefits from the
platform.More research is needed to corroborate
many of the findings in this research. One of the
caveats is that the analysis is restricted to the
Andorid ecosystem.
While this restriction has assisted in improving
our understanding of how platform controllers deal
with competing organizational values through their
platform strategies, we would require more cases
where the findings can be tested. A task for future
research would be to conduct longitudinal studies on
various mobile and non-mobile software platforms
and analyze platform controllers balance their
organizational values over the lifecycle of a
platform.
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