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Research summary: Platform ecosystems have spurred new products and services, sparked innovation, and improved economic efficiency in various industries and technology sectors. A distinctive feature of the platform architecture is its modular and interdependent system of core and complementary components bound together by design rules and an overarching value proposition. Accordingly, we conceptualize platforms as metaorganizations, or "organizations of organizations" that are less formal and less hierarchical structures than firms, and yet more closely coupled than traditional markets. To function successfully, however, platforms require coordination among multiple participants not all of whose interests are aligned. These organizational features of platforms raise many interesting and complex strategic challenges and hold implications for how platforms compete. In this paper, we discuss some of the most salient features of platform ecosystems as meta-organizations, specifically in terms of the sources of authority or power in the ecosystem, the motivation and incentives a platform creates to attract participants, and its governance and coordination structures. We then consider how papers appearing in this special issue inform us about the effects of these features on platform competition along three distinct dimensions:

P lentiful research suggests that embeddedness in alliance networks influences firms' innovativeness. This research, however, has mostly overlooked the fact that interorganizational ties are themselves embedded within larger institutional contexts that can shape the effects of networks on organizational outcomes. We address this gap in the literature by arguing that national institutions affect the extent to which specific network positions, such as brokerage, influence innovation. We explore this idea in the context of corporatism, which fosters an institutional logic of collaboration that influences the broker's ability to manage its partnerships and recombine the knowledge residing in its network as well as the extent of knowledge flows among network participants. We argue that differences in institutional logics lead brokerage positions to exert different effects on firm innovativeness. We propose that the firm spanning structural holes obtains the greatest innovation benefits when the firm (the broker) or its alliance partners are based in highly corporatist countries, or under certain combinations of broker and partner corporatism. We find support for these ideas through a longitudinal study of cross-border fuel cell technology alliance networks involving 109 firms from nine countries between 1981 and 2001.

This study investigates the conformance quality benefits of colocating manufacturing with research and development (R&D) activities. Findings from a panel data set of U.S.-based pharmaceutical plants over a 13-year period reveal that colocation of manufacturing and R&D relates to better conformance quality, on average, across the entire sample. We find that these benefits of colocation persist throughout the time period we study (1994–2007), which is surprising, given the rapid development of information and communication technologies during that time. These benefits are particularly enhanced for manufacturing plants operating with processes that involve a high level of tacit process knowledge and that belong to large firms. Our findings highlight the importance of matching organizational design with process and firm characteristics in settings involving knowledge interdependence. They also highlight the continued value of physical proximity through geographical colocation between manufacturing and R&D activities to achieve desired quality outcomes. This paper was accepted by Serguei Netessine, operations management.