Explaining how Platforms Foster Innovation in Service Ecosystems

Abstract

Service innovation research has extended the study of service ecosystems to embrace the role of platforms, thus creating a sustainable advantage in competitive markets. Making creative and effective use of innovation platforms requires a better understanding of how key actors foster service innovation by engaging with multiple actors, understanding dynamic structures and managing the innovation process. This article explains how firms configure and use innovation platforms to foster service innovations. Drawing on agency-driven and structure-driven concepts, the framework developed in this paper, links the innovation platform to renew ongoing business. Constituted by shared structures, including norms, standards, and rules together with value co-creation logics, the innovation platform functions as the institutionalized site focused on innovative resource integration and value co-creation processes. The usefulness of the framework is shown by describing how six firms use three categories of a platform to pursue innovation.