Abstract
Strategic resource openness refers to the opening of proprietary resources such as source code or APIs and has been successfully used by technology firms like Apple, Google, or Meta. Despite its central role in transforming industries, research has largely studied strategic openness as an organizational phenomenon, ignoring impacts at the industry level. We studied the case of TESLA’s resource openness and its effects at both organizational and industry levels using primary and secondary data. To allow for discovery, we used a grounded theory approach to reveal how opening resources increased TESLA’s competitiveness and contributed to the transformation of the automotive industry. The analysis suggests that TESLA’s resource openness supports technology platform creation, ecosystem development, and industry standardization and growth. The resulting theoretical model extends our understanding of strategic resource openness by indicating how openness impacts both the organization as well as the industry in which it is situated.
Recommended Citation
Wolff, Bastian; Schlagwein, Daniel; and Schoder, Detlef, "Revealing Organization and Industry Level Effects of
“Strategic Resource Openness”: The Case of TESLA and the
Automotive Industry" (2025). ACIS 2025 Proceedings. 22.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/acis2025/22