Start Date
11-12-2016 12:00 AM
Description
Digital ecosystems continue to evolve, as new external APIs continue to enter into it. Not all new APIs, however, have the same fate: some are successfully connected with existing APIs and spark major changes in the ecosystem, while others are simply ignored. Particularly, some of the components end up playing a major role in shaping the structure of the ecosystem. To systematically explore what determines the fate of different APIs, we hypothesize how the network property and non-network property of external APIs affect the probability of the APIs becoming a part of the newly generated structure of a digital ecosystem. For the empirical test, we used plug-in source code data collected from Wordpress.org from January 2004 to December 2014. Using a survival analysis, we found that external APIs are more influential than APIs offered by a focal platform system in the growth of a digital ecosystem.
Recommended Citation
Um, SungYong and Yoo, Youngjin, "The Co-Evolution of Digital Ecosystems" (2016). ICIS 2016 Proceedings. 11.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2016/DigitalInnovation/Presentations/11
The Co-Evolution of Digital Ecosystems
Digital ecosystems continue to evolve, as new external APIs continue to enter into it. Not all new APIs, however, have the same fate: some are successfully connected with existing APIs and spark major changes in the ecosystem, while others are simply ignored. Particularly, some of the components end up playing a major role in shaping the structure of the ecosystem. To systematically explore what determines the fate of different APIs, we hypothesize how the network property and non-network property of external APIs affect the probability of the APIs becoming a part of the newly generated structure of a digital ecosystem. For the empirical test, we used plug-in source code data collected from Wordpress.org from January 2004 to December 2014. Using a survival analysis, we found that external APIs are more influential than APIs offered by a focal platform system in the growth of a digital ecosystem.