Paradox in Technology Ecosystem Governance

Technology platform strategies offer a novel way to orchestrate a rich portfolio of contributions made by the many independent actors who form an ecosystem of heterogeneous complementors around a stable platform core. This form of organising has been successfully used in the smartphone, gaming, social-networking, and commercial software industries, amongst others. Technology ecosystems require stability and control to leverage common investments in standard components, yet also need creativity and variety to meet heterogeneous market demand. While this control-creativity tension has been addressed conceptually in the literature, additional empirical analysis can deepen our understanding of this tension, and identify additional tensions common in technology ecosystems. Tensions may manifest as dualisms, where actors are faced with contradictory, either/or decisions. Alternatively, they can manifest as dualities, where tensions are framed as complementary and mutually-enabling. We explore these issues through an extensive case study of a business software ecosystem consisting of a major multinational software manufacturer at the core, and a system of independent implementation partners and solution developers on the periphery. Our research analyses three primary tensions: control-creativity, standardisation-variety, and individual-collective. We explore the mechanisms of the ecosystem governance that accommodate these tensions, and highlight the specific properties that can be generalizable to other technology ecosystems. Finally, we identify triggers in the case data where latent, mutually enabling tensions become manifest as salient, disabling tensions. By identifying transitions between the complementary and contradictory logics, our study contributes to the understanding of both the design of the ecosystem governance, but also the constant managerial finesse needed to achieve equilibrium and avoid problems of "market failure" in technology ecosystems that function as semi-regulated marketplaces.