Digital Platform Ecosystem Dynamics: The Roles of Product Scope, Innovation, and Collaborative Network Centrality

Abstract

This research highlights the circulative nature of digital platform ecosystem dynamics. Investigating these dynamics, we examine the mutual influence between participants’ product scope and product innovation over time and probe the moderating role of co-created collaborative networks. We distinguish between two types of product innovation: new product development and existing product updates. Our longitudinal analysis of the Hadoop software ecosystem indicates that participants covering a broader scope of the platform’s technological layers are less likely to develop new products but more likely to update existing products. In turn, participants with more frequent new product development are more likely to expand their product scope, whereas those with more frequent existing product updates are less likely to pursue scope expansion. Participants’ centrality in the ecosystem’s collaborative network amplifies the bidirectional link between product scope and existing product updates but weakens the link between product scope and new product development. Our findings offer a theoretical and practical understanding of temporal dynamics between participants’ product scope choices and different forms of product innovations in the co-created collaborative network environment.