Effectual application development on digital platforms
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POSITION PAPER
Effectual application development on digital platforms Alan Hevner 1
&
Onkar Malgonde 2
Received: 20 February 2018 / Accepted: 8 January 2019 # Institute of Applied Informatics at University of Leipzig 2019
Abstract The development of novel software applications on digital platforms differs radically from traditional software development. In this position paper, we posit that software development managers and teams face unique challenges in platform environments and require new development approaches to be successful. While traditional software development approaches have focused on achieving application-market match, platform-based applications must also achieve application-platform match, applicationmarket match, value propositions exceeding platform’s core value propositions, and novelty. We argue that these desired properties support a new vision of the software development team as entrepreneurs. To support this positioning insight, we discuss the limitations of existing software development approaches and introduce an innovative approach for application development on digital platforms that is grounded in the theory of effectuation from the field of entrepreneurship. We investigate an existing application development environment (Apache Cordova) on digital platforms to see if the concepts of effectuation are present. The preliminary findings provide support for the promise of effectual development methods. We conclude with a call for innovative effectual methods of software development on digital platforms and an accompanying research agenda. Keywords Digital platforms . Software application development . Effectuation . Novelty JEL classification M15
Digital platforms Digital innovations are new combinations of digital and physical components characterized by reprogrammability, homogenization of data, and use of digital technology (Yoo et al. 2010). The digital platform,1 as shown in Fig. 1, is becoming a 1 We adopt the definition of digital platform given by Tiwana et al. (2010) and extended by Ghazawneh and Henfridsson (2015, p. 199) as Bsoftware-based external platforms consisting of the extensible codebase of a software-based system that provides core functionality shared by the modules that interoperate with it and the interfaces through which they interoperate.^ For reviews of digital platforms and their components, the reader is referred to de Reuver et al. (2017), Tiwana (2013), and Parker et al. (2016).
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Design Science Research in the Networked Economy Responsible Editor: Alexander Mädche * Alan Hevner [email protected] 1
Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA
2
Department of Operations Management and Information Systems, College of Business, Northern Illinois University, Illinois, USA
pervasive technology that is rapidly transforming the ways in which products and services are produced and consumed in our market economy (Parker et al. 2016). Digital platforms rep
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