Open AccessTwo-Sided Platform Ecosystems’ Structure, Architecture and Mechanism: an Integrated View--Under the Background of Industry 4.0
Author(s) -
Bader Tariq Eid Hakam Zheng Sheng Hua
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
converter
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.104
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 0010-8189
DOI - 10.17762/converter.204
Subject(s) - competition (biology) , mechanism (biology) , business ecosystem , knowledge management , architecture , business , open platform , context (archaeology) , industrial organization , computer science , business model , process management , marketing , ecology , art , paleontology , philosophy , epistemology , software , visual arts , biology , programming language
Platform model is one of the most prominent phenomena in modern business with the development of the Internet and the continuous expansion of the scale of industry 4.0 related industries. Two-sided platforms show features whereby two groups of agents interact with each other, in order to promote resource exchange and value creation. This review presents an integrated framework for understanding key factors of platform ecosystems, analyzing its member structure and technology architecture, exploring the dynamic mechanism and competition mechanism. Platform ecosystems refer to the core platform and its cooperative network of stakeholders, mainly consist of providers, sponsors, complementors and end users. The dynamic mechanism and competition mechanism are mainly in the realization of network effects and “winner-take-all”. These bring some management challenges, the preventive strategies are embodied in platform pricing, positioning, binding, in realization of ecosystem expansion and multi-win situation, to face the “egg-and chicken” syndrome and “get both sides of the market onboard”. Using this foundation, this research finally proposes five directions for future research in these settings, including the influence of platform technology architecture on complement or innovation, profit model of platform companies, environmental factors in platform competition, new challenge of platform envelopment and dynamic research methods, hoping to offer substantial new insights in the context of platforms and ecosystems.