The organization of technological platforms

This essay examines the relationship between technology and organizations in the context of technological industry platforms. Industry platforms are technological building blocks (that can be technologies, products, or services) that act as a foundation on top of which an array of firms, organized in a set of interdependent firms (sometimes called an industry ecosystem), develop a set of inter-related products, technologies and services (Gawer, 2009).The study of platforms highlights an intriguing hypothesis: that the internal organization of firms (such as platform leaders) and the external organization of firms (i.e., the organization of the sector or the ecosystem of firms) are interrelated, and mediated by the organization of the platform technology. In particular, the internal organization of firms, when coherent with the organization of the technology, may have an influence on these firms’ ability to exert an influence on external firms.

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