Transforming Organizational Resource into Platform boundary Resources

The emergence of digital platforms shifts the locus of innovation from firms to ecosystems. This shift deprives product-developing firms of established control mechanisms and calls for new alternatives. Existing literature argues that platform owners have to empower ecosystems, while respecting the autonomy of members. This point to a contradiction; platform owners and third-party developers are interdependent, yet, at the same time, fundamentally detached. Contemporary research suggests that we may address this contradiction through the concept of boundary resources. Serving as the interface for arm’s length relationships, boundary resources are shaped in the interplay between platform owners and application developer. However, we have found that they are also formed in a continuous negotiation with existing firm assets. Therefore, in this research we ask how product-developing firms transform internal resources into platform boundary resources. We conducted a case study of a digital platform initiative at Volvo Group, a global truck manufacturer. Drawing on the concept of tuning, we studied Volvo’s practices in shaping boundary resources within and across multiple organizational and technological contexts. We found that resource transformation may leave firms in limbo; exposing an asset as a platform boundary resource tends to destroy its value as an internal organizational resource.