Umeå University's logo

Digital ecosystem governance entails the management of complex, dynamic power relationships. As entrant platform providers seek to cultivate an ecosystem, they must carefully navigate these power relationships when dealing with governance tensions. Providers generally seek to leverage the ecosystem's generative potential by facilitating a variety of interactions and distributing design rights. Simultaneously, they need to ensure stability and order by imposing rules that resolve contentious matters and restrict system participants' degrees of freedom. This study explores how and why providers can induce ecosystem actors to engage in collaborative negotiation regarding such governance tensions through a case study of the introduction of an open data platform in the Swedish public transport sector. Our analysis offers three main contributions. First, it provides an empirical demonstration that entrepreneurial threats, as well as opportunities, can trigger platform launches and drive collaborative negotiation of digital ecosystem governance. Second, it extends conceptualizations of boundary resources beyond the current focus on transactional elements by demonstrating the role of interactive boundary resources in the negotiation of governance grounded in both social and systemic power relationships.Third, it shows how positive reinforcement can complement punitive measures to increase acceptance of design rules.

Digital platforms are affecting most contemporary organizations as they mediate an increasing range and number of interactions in their ecosystems. While the discourse on digital platform ecosystems has gained in interest over the years, it often revolves around dominant global firms and how they utilize their control over governance and architecture configurations to exercise power in shaping trajectories. This dissertation seeks to provide insights into the processes through which new digital platforms ecosystems are established by identifying challenges in orchestrating emerging digital ecosystems and approaches through which these can be navigated. To this end, my research focused on the establishment of an open data platform in the public transport industry in Sweden.

My theoretical and empirical investigation provides three contributions to our understanding of orchestration of emerging digital ecosystems. The first contribution is the identification of key challenges in orchestrating an emerging ecosystem through a review of extant literature. The review suggests that challenges in orchestrating emerging ecosystems revolve around three goals: (1) attracting and generating network effects; (2) control and coordination; and (3) creating and capturing value. Thus, whether ecosystem establishment is successful or not depends in large part on how providers are able to address these challenges. The identification of challenges and remedies could be helpful for practitioners and scholars when assessing and diagnosing emerging ecosystems. However, I suggest that the different challenges and proposed solutions should not be treated as fixed and isolated guidelines in assessing ecosystems. Instead, providers should consider the challenges holistically in their ecosystem since there are interplays and interactions between their underlying socio-technical aspects. The second contribution is a conceptualization of the nature of orchestration in emerging digital ecosystems. I demonstrate that orchestration in an emerging ecosystem is inherently embroiled in a web of fragile power relationships among actors, unbounded participation, unbounded control, emergent outcomes, and persistent competing concerns. The third contribution of my thesis is the practical implications for how providers can approach orchestration and address challenges in emerging digital ecosystems. The fragile nature of emerging ecosystems suggests that orchestration is not limited to arm´s length measures but also stands to benefit from social interactions and relationship-building among actors with distinctive interests and understanding of their own rights.

Digital Platforms impose organizing logics on ecosystems. Dependent on their configuration, they enable certain practices, relationships, and value distribution among actors while preventing alternatives. Incumbent platforms often have a strong power to implement contested configurations since they control access to attractive user groups/markets. However, emerging platforms have a small degree of bargaining power in relation to key actors since they have not yet achieved such a position. Although numerous studies detail governance strategies for incumbent platform ecosystems, research on how platform providers navigate competing concerns in emerging platform ecosystems remain rare. We report on a study of the establishment and continuous dynamics of a digital platform used for service innovation. We inductively identify a pattern of the dynamics in this navigation process, locate four salient tensions driving these dynamics, and provide insights on how the platform provider navigated them.

Digital platforms facilitate interactions across distinct groups of users, gaining value from the number ofusers adopting it through network effects. A key concern is how to scale the platform’s user base andservices. Although studies detail strategies for scaling a platform’s user base, much emphasis is on platformsthat exercise proprietary ownership over core platform components. This paper draws on the notion ofvalue-driven lock-ins to understand how platforms scale in ecosystems where control of core componentsis distributed across multiple actors. To investigate how platform owners, operationalize value-driven lockinsin scaling platforms in such contexts, we trace resource configurations that facilitate scaling of serviceinnovation from an open API platform. Our findings suggest that a key focus in establishing value-drivenlock-ins involves resource configurations that seek to reduce the cognitive distance between platformowners and distributed actors. Ensuring participation in such ecosystems requires trust aligned withprogressive access to services.

Digital platforms facilitate interactions across distinct groups of users, gaining value from the number of users adopting it through network effects. A key concern is how to scale the platform's user base and services. Although studies detail strategies for scaling a platform's user base, much emphasis is on platforms that exercise proprietary ownership over core platform components. This paper draws on the notion of value-driven lock-ins to understand how platforms scale in ecosystems where control of core components is distributed across multiple actors. To investigate how platform owners, operationalize value-driven lockins in scaling platforms in such contexts, we trace resource configurations that facilitate scaling of service innovation from an open API platform. Our findings suggest that a key focus in establishing value-driven lock-ins involves resource configurations that seek to reduce the cognitive distance between platform owners and distributed actors. Ensuring participation in such ecosystems requires trust aligned with progressive access to services.

Open Data Marketplaces have emerged as a mode of adressing open data adoption barriers. However, knowledge of how such marketplaces affect Digital service innovation in open data ecosystems is limited. This paper explores their value proposition for open  for open data users based on an exploratory case study. Five prominent perceived values are indentified: lower task complexity, higher access to knowledge, increased possibilities to infleunce, lower risk and higher visibility. The impact on open data adoption barriers is analyzed and the consequences for  ecosystem sustainability is discussed. The paper concludes that open data marketplaces can lower the threshold of using open data by providing better access to open data and associated support services, and by increasing knolwedge transfer withi the ecosystem.