The Inter-Organizational Dynamics of a Platform Ecosystem: Exploring Stakeholder Boundaries

摘要

The Internet of Things (IoT) creates a myriad of new business opportunities that focus on collecting, transmitting, and analyzing product data. IoT collaborations bring together diverse firms with separate skill-sets that both produce and utilize digitized data to co-create value. While previous research has explored the technical implications of IoT in great detail, it has largely ignored the business implications of such endeavors. In this paper, we focus on the early stages of the emerging inter-organizational relationships that IoT enables and ask the question: How can the inter-organizational dynamics between disparate actors in an IoT ecosystem be perceived and understood? By conducting a qualitative case study and tracing four types of organizational boundaries: efficiency, power, competence and identity, we show how firm boundaries are emergent, dynamic, and constantly negotiated between firms. Allowing for and understanding this relational interplay is crucial in order for IoT ecosystems to thrive and grow.