The purpose of this chapter is to introduce two new building blocks to the theory of how technology shapes organizations. The first is a new layer of organization structure: a business “ecosystem.” The second is the economic concept of “complementarity.” Ecosystems are groups of...

This paper suggest a typology of possible sources of synergies and relates the different types of synergies to corresponding types of coordination mecha-nisms. The propositions regarding the relationship between different types of synergy and different coordination mechanisms are illustrated...

Synergy is a concept fraught with ambiguity about its sources and effects, perhaps as a consequence of of previous literature on the subject not distinguishing between these. In this paper, the sources of synergy are separated from the sources of sustainable competitive advantage in order to...

We study competitive interaction between profit-maximizing firms that sell software and complementary goods or services. In addition to tactical price competition, we allow firms to compete through business model reconfigurations. We consider three business models: the proprietary model (where...

We present a model of industry equilibrium to study the coexistence of Open Source (OS) and Proprietary (P) firms. Two novel aspects of the model are: (1) participation in OS arises as the optimal decision of profit-maximizing firms, and (2) OS and P firms may (or may not) coexist in...

We present a model of industry equilibrium to study the coexistence of open-source and proprietary firms. Two novel aspects of the model are (i) participation in open source arises as the optimal decision of profit-maximizing firms, and (ii) open-source and proprietary firms may (or may not)...

We analyze the monopolist’s decision about how to design different versions of a good, i.e. whether to make them substitutes or complements, when consumers can buy them simultaneously. In this context, we find that versioning goods as substitutes or complements may be optimal for the...

The paper addresses the relevancy of networking activities and R&D as main drivers of productivity performance and ouput innovation, for small and medium enterprises (SME) playing in a local economic system. Given the intangible nature of many techno organisational innovation and networking...

This paper investigates whether firms’ joint implementation of organisational innovation and training may foster their adoption of environmental innovation (EI), and if this correlation falls within Porter Hypothesis (PH) framework. We study the relationship of complementarity between...