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J·BJon BishopIndependent growth marketer

Platforms · Empirical study (abstract-only)

Open Platform Strategies and Innovation: Granting Access vs. Devolving Control

Management Science · 2010

Kevin Boudreau

Summary

This paper studies two fundamentally distinct approaches to opening a technology platform and their different impacts on innovation. One approach is to grant access to a platform and thereby open up markets for complementary components around the platform. Another approach is to give up control over the platform itself. Using data on 21 handheld computing systems (1990–2004), I find that granting greater levels of access to independent hardware developer firms produces up to a fivefold accelerat.

For your marketing

Possible founder application

Use the study’s platform, complementor, API, ecosystem, open-source, or standards implications to guide governance, partner incentives, integration priorities, and ecosystem experimentation; validate in the founder’s market.

Reported result

What the study found

This paper studies two fundamentally distinct approaches to opening a technology platform and their different impacts on innovation. One approach is to grant access to a platform and thereby open up markets for complementary components around the platform. Another approach is to give up control over the platform itself. Using data on 21 handheld computing systems (1990–2004), I find that granting greater levels of access to independent hardware developer firms produces up to a fivefold accelerat.

Research question

What the authors investigated

How does the study’s stated design explain its reported outcome in this setting?

Design

Empirical study (abstract-only)

Sample and setting

Abstract-only; sample/context details were not reported in the fetched metadata.

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

Abstract/metadata-only evidence; detailed sampling, measures, causal identification, and external-validity limits require the full paper.

Research sources

abstract_only

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