In this paper we investigate the ways in which new forms of organization enabled by digital technologies such as crowdsourcing and digital marketplaces are allowing firms to circumvent and defy traditional knowledge constraints. This is part of the broader question of when and why these forms of...

The scope of the activities performed by the platform sponsor vis-à-vis the complementors is one of the key decisions that platform sponsors must continually make. Yet, the implications of alternative scope decisions are not well understood. This article delves deeper into platform sponsors’...

Though the burgeoning literature on platform ecosystems has sought to understand different aspects of this emerging phenomenon, the different types of ecosystems are treated in a somewhat homogenous manner. In this paper, we fill this gap and provide an organizing framework to examine the...

Though the burgeoning literature on platform ecosystem has sought to understand different aspects of this emerging phenomenon, the topic of ecosystem emergence has not received enough attention. In this paper, we identify the conditions under which ecosystems emerge and explain why they emerge...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many of the weaknesses in our current systems of government and commerce. In this essay I provide some historical context to the recent era of ‘hyper-globalization’. I then present multiple factors---economic, social, political, technological and...

Platform sponsors and complementors co-create value in digital platform ecosystems. But how does a digital platform ecosystem emerge in the incipient stage, especially in a situation where value co-creation involves attracting complementors to platform sponsors who are unknown to one another? We...

The rise of digital platform-enabled ecosystems (DPEs) has sparked renewed interest in economic organizing. Unlike more classic modes of organizing like markets and firms, DPEs make coordination and cooperation possible among innumerable autonomous but interdependent actors to co-create value...

In this article I make three main arguments. First, the appropriate governance choice for firms is one that reflects the tradeoff between market failure and relational failure or, in other words, between knowledge appropriability and knowledge accessibility. Second, through what may be...