Different Approaches to Complementing Software Platforms: A Case Study of Digital Innovation Across 10 Developing Countr
Software platforms offer a foundation for digital innovation and have the potential to take advantage of and leverage the knowledge and skills of distributed and diverse software organizations as ‘complementors’. Due to their location far away from platfo
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, Masoud Mahundi3
, and Petter Nielsen1
1 University of Oslo, Ole-Johan Dahls Hus, Gaustadalléen 23 B, 0373 Oslo, Norway
[email protected] 2 University Eduardo Mondlane, Av. Julius Nyerere, nr. 3453, Maputo City, Mozambique 3 University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Abstract. Software platforms offer a foundation for digital innovation and have the potential to take advantage of and leverage the knowledge and skills of distributed and diverse software organizations as ‘complementors’. Due to their location far away from platform owners, scarce resources, and limited capacity to hire and retain skilled human resources, organizations in developing countries typically face barriers for participating in digital innovation. This paper aims to improve our understanding of how these organizations can take part in digital innovation. The basis for our research is a case study of software organizations located in different developing countries and their role as complementors related to the DHIS2 software platform, a platform made for the public health sector in developing countries. We contribute by exploring and showing how these organizations differ along multiple dimensions, for instance, the maturity of their software development team, their relation to the platform owners, and their access to resources. Further, we identify and develop a taxonomy consisting of six different forms of digital innovation unfolding in the fringes of a software platform ecosystem and identify contextual factors influencing these different forms. Keywords: Complementors · Software platform · Fringes · Innovation
1 Introduction As software platforms permit and require innovations on top of them for their prosperity, to release their economies of scope and scale, the platform owners must ensure that other organizations engage in innovations on top of their platforms. This effort is enabled by the underlying architecture of platforms which is characterised as an ‘extensible codebase’ [29]. While the objectives and governance of software platforms might be different from one platform to another, they are all defined by their architecture comprising of two parts; one with low variety and high reusability and another with high variety and low reusability [4, 15]. The first part forming the core of the platform while the second forming the periphery, or the fringes [25]. Innovations related to software platforms © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2020 Published by Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. M. Bass and P. J. Wall (Eds.): ICT4D 2020, IFIP AICT 587, pp. 14–25, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65828-1_2
Different Approaches to Complementing Software Platforms
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thus unfold on two levels: at the core platform to improve its generic features, and on the fringes to serve specific local needs [25]. Being, in the last case undertaken by individuals or organisations, other than the platform owners, commonly referred to as complementors [6, 15, 20, 28], because they develop ‘complements’ both
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