How open is open enough? Melding proprietary and open source platform strategies.

West, J. (2003). How open is open enough? Melding proprietary and open source platform strategies. Research Policy, 32(7), 1259-1285.

Type

Journal article

Intellectual base

Primary research

Year

2003

Volume

32

Issue

7

Pages

1259-1285

ISSN

0048-7333

DOI

10.1016/s0048-7333(03)00052-0

DOI registrant

Elsevier

Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(03)00052-0

Cited from

economics_finance, engineering_design, mathematics, systems_cybernetics

Cited by

6 citations across 6 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Decomposition
  • Listed in the references but not attached to a specific claim.
• Design for Lifecycle Adaptability

  • This source(Bibliography-only — uncited in body; platform-strategy contamination.)

• Interface
  • In open ecosystems, interface control is contested and hard-won; in closed systems, it is unilateral, a strategic dynamic West (2003) analyzes in his study of how platform vendors balance proprietary control against open adoption.

    This sourceAnalyzes the political economy of interface ownership: platform vendors balance appropriability (proprietary control) against adoption (openness), showing that interface control is a strategic and contested resource.

• Platform Design
  • A common failure is either ossifying the platform (compatibility at the cost of progress, platform becomes stale relative to competitors) or breaking compatibility too frequently (applications constantly break, ecosystem loses confidence in the platform)

    This sourceAnalyzes the political economy of interface ownership: platform vendors balance appropriability (proprietary control) against adoption (openness), showing that interface control is a strategic and contested resource.

• Specialization
  • Listed in the references but not attached to a specific claim.
• Substitutability
  • Listed in the references but not attached to a specific claim.

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