How Incumbent Firms Navigate Nascent Digital Platform Ecosystems in the Internet of Things: A Contextualized Perspective on Value Co-Creation in Platform Ecosystems

This thesis is focusing on three little-explored contextual conditions that are important for a better understanding of digital platform ecosystems: digital platforms in a nascent stage of maturity, digital platforms built by incumbents, and digital platforms embedded in the IoT phenomenon. Thus, the thesis contributes to the question of how established companies navigating nascent digital platform ecosystems in the IoT. The work builds and contributes to the literature on digital platform ecosystems. Three main contributions are made through explorative qualitative research in the form of Delphi and case studies as well as through systematic literature research on the above-mentioned themes: First, the thesis synthesizes important knowledge about the nascent stage of digital platform ecosystems and identifies value co-creation challenges specific to this early maturity stage. Second, given the increasing importance of established companies in the platform discourse, this thesis identifies the intra- and inter-organizational challenges that incumbent organizations face in building digital platform ecosystems, emphasizing the importance of the organizational type in building a platform ecosystem. Third, the dissertation positions platforms in the IoT as a new digital platform instantiation within the scholarly platform discourse and outlines important phoneme-related characteristics that determine value creation.