The concept of modularity has gained considerable traction in technology studies as a way to conceive, describe and innovate complex systems, such as product design or organizational structures. In the recent literature, technological modularity has often been intertwined with business model innovation, and scholarship has started investigating how modularity in technology affects changes in business models, both at the cognitive and activity system levels. Yet we still lack a theoretical definition of what modularity is in the business model domain. Business model innovation also encompasses different possibilities of modeling businesses, which are not clearly understood nor classified. We ask when, how and if modularity theory can be extended to business models in order to enable effective and efficient modeling. We distinguish theoretically between modularity for technology and for business models, and investigate the key processes of modularization and manipulation. We introduce the basic operations of business modeling via modular operators adapted from the technological modularity domain, using iconic examples to develop an analogical reasoning between modularity in technology and in business models. Finally, we discuss opportunities for using modularity theory to foster the understanding of business models and modeling, and develop a challenging research agenda for future investigations.

Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to produce detailed topologies of the Internet. Although Internet topology data have been brought to the attention of a wide and somewhat diverse audience of scholars, so far they have been overlooked by economists. In this paper, we suggest that such data could be effectively treated as a proxy to characterize the size of the "digital economy" at country level and outsourcing: thus, we analyse the topological structure of the network of trade in digital services (trade in bits) and compare it with that of the more traditional flow of manufactured goods across countries. To perform meaningful comparisons across networks with different characteristics, we define a stochastic benchmark for the number of connections among each country-pair, based on hypergeometric distribution. Original data are thus filtered by means of different thresholds, so that we only focus on the strongest links, i.e., statistically significant links. We find that trade in bits displays a sparser and less hierarchical network structure, which is more similar to trade in high-skill manufactured goods than total trade. Lastly, distance plays a more prominent role in shaping the network of international trade in physical goods than trade in digital services.JEL Codes: F14, L86, O33

This paper introduces a case study on the potential of new mechatronic chassis systems for battery electric vehicles, in this case a brake-by-wire (BBW) system and in-wheel propulsion on the rear axle combined with an integrated chassis control providing common safety features like anti-lock braking system (ABS), and enhanced functionalities, like torque blending. The presented controller was intended to also show the potential of continuous control strategies with regard to active safety, vehicle stability and driving comfort. Therefore, an integral sliding mode (ISM) and proportional integral (PI) control were used for wheel slip control (WSC) and benchmarked against each other and against classical used rule-based approach. The controller was realized in MatLab/Simulink and tested under real-time conditions in IPG CarMaker simulation environment for experimentally validated models of the target vehicle and its systems. The controller also contains robust observers for estimation of non-measurable vehicle states and parameters e.g., vehicle mass or road grade, which can have a significant influence on control performance and vehicle safety.

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Software design and development in Free/Open Source projects are analyzed through the lens of the theory of modularity applied to complex systems. We show that both the architecture of the artifacts (software) and the organization of the projects benefited from the paradigm of modularity in an original and effective manner. In particular, our analysis on empirical evidence suggests that three main shortcuts to modular design have been introduced and effectively applied. First, some successful projects inherited previously existing modular architecture, rather than designing new modular systems from scratch. Second, popular modular systems, like GNU/Linux kernel, evolved from an initial integrated structure through a process of evolutionary adaptation. Third, the development of modular software took advantage of the violation of one fundamental rule of modularity, that is, information hiding. Through these three routines, the projects can exploit the benefits of modularity, such as concurrent engineering, division of labor, decentralized and parallel development; at the same time, these routines lessen some of the problems posed by the design of modular architectures, namely imperfect decompositions of interdependent components. Implications and extensions of Free/Open Source projects experience are discussed in the conclusions.