CONCLUSION
Platforms constitute a major organizational innovation in knowledge governance that exploit the advantages of ICTs in terms of improved flexibility, enhanced control and efficient networking.
Platforms are becoming crucial tools for implementing and supporting knowledge governance, both at the firm and the system levels. At the firm level, the creation of and the inclusion in a platform is essential to manage the knowledgegeneration process, thus widening the range of competencies that can be accessed and integrated by recombination. Platforms make it possible to increase the amount and the quality of external knowledge that can be used by each firm. As such, platforms enable a drastic reduction of the need to generate new technological knowledge and to introduce technological innovations within a single organization. Rather, firms can substitute cheaper external knowledge for internal more expensive research and developmentTable 15.3 Platform strategies and characteristics in the ICTsector
| Key Platform Dimensions | |||
| Scope | Architecture | External network | |
| Intel | Exploration of external resources Collaboration with external producers of complements | Modular structure Open interfaces Collaboration on standard setting | Long-term collaborations with complements producers Value sharing |
| Microsoft | Exploitation of internal core competencies | Closed structure Proprietary interfaces and standards | Horizontal and vertical competition Horizontal and vertical integration of producers Value appropriation |
| Cisco | External knowledge exploitation and acquisition | Mixed structure Open standards and interfaces Proprietary development of new technologies Proprietary software | Long-term collaborations with complements producers Horizontal and vertical integration of producers |
| Palm | Exploitation of internal core competencies on hardware and software Collaboration with external producers of applications | Modular structure that facilitate complements development Proprietary technologies on OS Open interfaces on applications | Long-term collaborations with complements producers Strong user-producer relations Collective learning |
| DoCoMo | Exploitation of internal resources External collaborations | Modular structure Open interfaces and standards | Long-term collaborations with producers |
| Linux | Strong exploration of external resources | Open standard | Collective learning |
Sources: Authors’ elaboration on information provided in Bresnahan (2002), Gawer and Cusumano (2002), Casadesus-Masanell and Yoffie (2007), Gawer and Henderson (2007), Tee and Gawer (2009) and Eisenmann et al.
(2011).
activities. The advantages of knowledge cumulability and non-exhaustibility are better exploited. From this viewpoint, platforms are an emerging organizational innovation that is likely to replace the Chandlerian corporation in many areas.
Platforms make it possible to better organize the valorization of technological knowledge after its generation, reducing uncontrolled leakages and exploiting economies of scope with the systematic internalization of potential complementarities with a wide range of partners. At the firm level, platforms make it possible to command the endogenous creation of knowledge externalities and, in so doing, make it possible at the same time: (1) to shrink the absorption costs that stem from a variety of activities such as search, screening, identification, decodification and recodification that are necessary to actually using external knowledge as an input into the generation of new knowledge, and (2) to increase the command of the knowledge exploitation processes. This accelerates the rate of technological innovations and increases their market value.
Support for the diffusion of platforms at the system level may become a major tool of economic policies aimed at increasing the quality of knowledge governance. First, platforms can become a key element of national and regional innovation systems. In an evolutionary perspective, the notion of an innovation system stresses the role that the variety of actors and the connections among those actors play in the generation of new knowledge and innovations. The implementation of platforms within innovation systems emphasizes that both the active selection of the members of the innovation system and their structured coordination should become a major goal for policy-makers in order to support the creation and diffusion of new knowledge and the introduction of innovations (Patrucco, 2014a). The active selection of the members of the system should be centered on the exploitation of knowledge complementarities, minimizing redundancies of endowments, skills and competencies.
In this regard, the active selection of the members and their structured and dynamic coordination enable overcoming the limits of the spontaneous coordination of innovative efforts within networks.Furthermore, the identification of potential platforms and the intervention of public authorities to stir their implementation may help the economic system to hasten the rate of generating of new technological knowledge and of the introduction of technological innovations. Integrating public procurement with active support for the creation of platforms on the supply side can become an effective framework to improve the capability of the system to command the endogenous creation and exploitation of knowledge externalities, using public procurement as a powerful incentive. Because platforms, like a glass mirror, make it possible to multiply the light of knowledge candles, a system in which public policy has been able to facilitate the implementation of a variety of platforms is likely to experience better performance in the generation of new technological knowledge at lower unit costs than one with fewer or more homogeneous platforms.
NOTES
* This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 266959.
↑ The authors acknowledge the institutional support of the Collegio Carlo Alberto and the University of Torino.
1. The term ‘knowledge society’ is also used as a synonym for ‘knowledge economy’.
2. The emergence of the so-called ‘ICT paradigm’ has been paralleled by a broader set of changes introduced in the telecommunication industry itself. Impinging upon the centrifugal properties of new communication technologies and the diminishing importance of scale economies, regulators liberalized telecommunication markets worldwide. Moreover, in the EU especially, they supported the entry of new players, which often delivered their communication services (such as, broadband services, TV on demand, Internet Protocol TC [IPTV] and Voice-over-IP [VoIP]) exploiting new communication technologies, of which the Internet is just the epitome.
In this regard, the emergence of the ‘ICT paradigm’ implies market changes both in the telecom market broadly speaking and in the industry that makes intensive use of ICTs. With regard to the former, ICTs and the Internet form both a product and a process innovation that radically change the way in which communication services are delivered (e.g., the shift from copper wires to fiber-optic cable and the introduction of wireless technologies) as well as the content of the services themselves (e.g., IPTV and VoIP). With regard to the latter, ICTs and the Internet are mainly used as process innovations thatOrganizational innovations, ICTs and knowledge governance 341 change the way in which production is organized, products are manufactured and services are delivered (for instance, increasing delocalization and outsourcing). These changes have greatly improved efficiency and control over production, and have relaxed the requirement of physical proximity between producers and users to deliver a given service.
3. By ‘technological convergence’ we mean the growing direction that characterizes technologies originally belonging to different systems to progressively carry out similar tasks. In particular, this is the case for technologies such as voice (e.g., telephony features), media and video (e.g., music and television services), and data (e.g., productivity applications) that previously were delivered separately and now, exploiting digitalization, share network and other resources and interact with each other through single physical devices (e.g., tablets and smartphones). In this sense, technological convergence relies upon technological complementarities and network effects and implies a networked product architecture. The Internet is itself a driver and a product of technological convergence, and probably the most powerful and pervasive result of such a convergence between new information and communication technologies (Fransman, 2010).
4. We can define interactions as personal and socially based forms of coordination for economic activity that do not need formal agreements, such as contracts, and do not rely on a price system.
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