| dc.description.abstract | This study explores different types of technological platforms in three industries in South Korea to understand why and how they have emerged and evolved. Studies on technological platforms significantly contribute to understand the dynamics of open and closed innovation but theoretical frameworks still have room for further empirical validation. Thus, this study expands upon and provides further empirical validation of the integrated analysis of different types of technological platforms and their emergence and evolution.
This study applied a comparative case study of three industries: automotive, electronics, and service robotics. I conducted 53 semi-structured interviews with engineers involved in the new product development process and collected secondary data, such as news articles, literature, and annual reports from firms.
The results confirmed that the automotive industry featured a supply chain platform. An OEM utilised modularisation but maintained its market power by strategically managing domestic suppliers, inhibiting the evolution of supply chain platforms into ecosystem platforms. The electronics industry featured a mixed configuration of both platforms as supply chain platforms moved towards ecosystem platforms due to the tension over leadership between assemblers and specialised suppliers. The service robotics industry formed ecosystem platforms from scratch. Due to the nature of the industry that uses specialised technologies to make various robots, key module suppliers have market power compared to assemblers. Thus, suppliers created ecosystem platforms using modularisation.
This study provides meaningful implications by supporting previous platform theory by proving that firms' strategic decisions on modularisation, the openness of interfaces and coordination lead to the evolution of platforms, and the leadership shift between agents in the industry is crucial to this evolution. Moreover, this study extended existing theory by showing that the platform evolution is driven not only by firms' strategic choice but also by the interaction of firm-level, network level and industry level modularisation. | en_US |
