Toward an evolutionary framework for platform-based ecosystem analysis

Creating a digital platform to access and leverage the potential of an ecosystem is recognized as an effective strategy to achieve market success. Platforms help ecosystems reach new potential and create the conditions for the development of catalytic reactions between various partners that, because they interact with each other, affect the value a platform can create for each of them. The more innovative these pa rtners are, the more vibrant the ecosystem will be, subject to facilitating the transformation of new ideas into new products or services that can be brought to market. In this conceptual paper, we analyze how platform-based ecosystems can ensure the commercialization of a constant flow of innovations. Our contribution focuses the role of platform-owners and the way they orchestrate the coupling process between the innovation part of the ecosystem - the innovation factory, IF - and the business development part of the ecosystem - BD. To this respect, we apply a life-cycle perspective, analyzing how the relationships between platform design, value creation and knowledge at the very core of the coupling process are dynamically aligned. Existing accounts of ecosystem dynamics are quite scarce in the academic literature and they do not systematically acknowledge these two subsystems. By considering the two parts of ecosystem, our paper contributes to a more fine-grained understanding of platform-based ecosystem evolution's process. Three case studies illustrate platform-owners' choices regarding the management of the coupling process.