The Sabbatical Project aims at extending and developing the knowledge-based view of the firm by studying digital platform-based ecosystems. It is important as these ecosystems have rapidly become a critical source of economic activity in our market society and are reshaping the socio-economic structures.
The role of platform owners/providers has moved from one of resource control (executed in a traditional corporate hierarchy) to orchestration of the surrounding ecosystem, by establishing contractual relationships with a large number of surrounding firms. In this way, even peripheral ecosystem participants’ knowledge and experiences are channelled back to the platform provider, constituting a learning loop based on multiple trial-and-error. The centrally placed platform can use this combined data from participants and customers to identify emerging combinations of valuable products and services that can be exploited in a wider context. To understand exactly how and where valuable knowledge is created in these systems, I intend to synthesize and extend my earlier research on the knowledge-based view and international management, to contribute to our understanding of an important contemporary phenomenon by crafting high-impact publications.
The conceptual work and the empirical studies on platform ecosystems will be carried out in close cooperation with the highly accomplished faculty in the Innovation and Strategy Area at the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand.