Marketing

Context (archaeology)

Business process

Value creation

Ecology

Biology

Business value

Microeconomics

Business ecosystem

Standardization

Work in process

Operating system

Economics

Scalability

Computer science

Business model

Business

Paleontology

Process management

Database

Value (mathematics)

Leverage (statistics)

Human capital

Co-creation

Industrial organization

Economic growth

Knowledge management

Machine learning

Profit (economics)

Ecosystem

Electronic Markets

Moving beyond value creation in individual companies, firms have integrated customers, partners, and stakeholders in a mutual value co-creation process. Examples are platforms such as Apple’s App Store, where external developers use boundary resources provided on the platform to develop and share applications in an ecosystem. While value co-creation on business-to-consumer platforms is common practice, research on their business-to-business (B2B) counterparts is still sparse. The goal of this paper is to analyze how B2B platforms utilize value co-creation practices. We conduct a multiple case study in the context of emerging Internet of things (IoT) platforms highlighting that B2B platforms follow three standardized value co-creation practices. The platform encourages the supply side through the (1) integration of complementary assets, the demand-side through (2) ensuring platform readiness and connects both processes by (3) servitization through application enablement. We conclude by showing how platforms leverage different boundary resources in a process of standardization to develop a scalable infrastructure that explains how platforms enable value co-creation within their ecosystem.

Value co-creation practices in business-to-business platform ecosystems