Start Date

12-18-2013

Description

Firms are increasingly relying on third-party developers to innovate by building open digital ecosystems. We draw on a network biology approach to explore the structural pattern of how individual modules in a digital ecosystem interact with one another to produce seemingly ever-changing landscape of the ecosystem. We conduct an empirical study using the data from WordPress.org, which is the world’s largest blog service platform. Using text mining and network analysis, we extract the API used in plug-ins developed by third party developers. We characterize each plug-ins as a combination of API modules. This allows us to examine the underlying structure of generativity in the WordPress ecosystem through a co-expression network of APIs. Even though there is no central designer coordinating the design of the entire WordPress ecosystem, the way APIs are used to form this complex and dynamic ecosystem follow a discernible pattern that is distinctive from known distributions.

Share

COinS
 
Dec 18th, 12:00 AM

The Architecture of Generativity in a Digital Ecosystem: A Network Biology Perspective

Firms are increasingly relying on third-party developers to innovate by building open digital ecosystems. We draw on a network biology approach to explore the structural pattern of how individual modules in a digital ecosystem interact with one another to produce seemingly ever-changing landscape of the ecosystem. We conduct an empirical study using the data from WordPress.org, which is the world’s largest blog service platform. Using text mining and network analysis, we extract the API used in plug-ins developed by third party developers. We characterize each plug-ins as a combination of API modules. This allows us to examine the underlying structure of generativity in the WordPress ecosystem through a co-expression network of APIs. Even though there is no central designer coordinating the design of the entire WordPress ecosystem, the way APIs are used to form this complex and dynamic ecosystem follow a discernible pattern that is distinctive from known distributions.