What influences platform provider's degree of openness? - Measuring and analyzing the degree of platform openness

Abstract

Software platform providers are increasingly opening up their platforms to take advantage of external resources and innovations. This research, based on existing theories, empirically analyzes the drivers of platform providers' decision to open up their platforms. Based on resourcebased view and control mechanism, we developed a set of hypotheses which explain the degree of platform openness adopted by the platform providers. We performed qualitative interviews and quantitatively validated the results. Thus, we developed an online survey targeting software platform providers. The results show that absorptive capabilities of platform providers play an important role in the degree of platform openness. We also found that the implementation of informal control modes influence the decision to use a higher degree of platform openness. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.