ECIS 2020 Research Papers

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Abstract

Digital platforms enable the mechanical engineering industry to address the challenges of global competition, supporting the provision of digital value-added services. These currently emerging Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platforms form ecosystems, integrating complementary stakeholders, and fostering the cooperation among them. The absence of a dominant platform leader in the IIoT indicates the complexity of the ecosystem development process. The development of platform-based ecosystems in the specific domain of IIoT is still largely unaddressed by the Information Systems (IS) research. To fill this gap, we employ an explorative study, based on the qualitative analysis of 18 semistructured interviews with companies from the machine tool industry. Catching the perspective of the complementors, we present the variety of stakeholder types, and the distinctive core competencies of the identified stakeholders, as important influencing factors for the ecosystem development. A platform provider can foster the motivation to join the ecosystem by considering these factors during the stakeholder-oriented design of ecosystem mechanisms, such as boundary resources (BR). We argue that the design of BR should begin with an understanding of stakeholders and their needs. Hence, we structure the findings in an Ishikawa diagram as one of the quality improvement tools to enhance the design of BR and support the ecosystem development process, which is controlled by platform-providers.

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