Complementors as connectors: managing open innovation around digital product platforms

In the digital age, open innovation is increasingly organized around platform ecosystems. This paper investigates how firms can coordinate open innovation as a platform strategy for the development of complementary products by independent third parties. We draw on a qualitative case study of Philips Hue – a connected lighting platform for consumers with its variety of complementary products. We identify three increasingly complex ways in which independent complements connect to a focal platform. Our findings show that managing these connections requires a hybrid open innovation approach that combines arm’s length coordination, with a large number of complementors through open interfaces, and intensive bilateral collaboration, with a selected number of partners. Our findings demonstrate that complex interconnections across digital platforms and products lead to the management challenge of navigating an ‘ecology of platforms’, which warrants future research.     

BUILDING THE MANAGERIAL CAPITAL OF AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES IN AFRICA

Agricultural cooperatives in Africa tend to be community‐based organizations defined by principles of inclusion, voluntarism, democracy, equity, autonomy, mutuality and solidarity. This means that they generally operate in accordance with the principles endorsed by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA). However, only a few of these organizations are successful in commercializing the agricultural produce of their members. In this study, we argue that growth‐problems leading to commercial failure and organizational degeneration in these cooperatives can be attributed to a lack of managerial capital. Drawing on the literature and evidence from the field we set out key management solutions for counterbalancing cooperative principles in the context of rural Africa. These solutions were taught to the leaders and managers of 362 cooperatives at four training events held in Madagascar, Malawi and twice in Uganda. Using a production function for cognitive achievement and key informant interviews, we find that our training contributed to the adoption of the proposed solutions by some of the cooperatives. Using the Ugandan sub‐ sample, we estimate an OLS regression and a PSM model to show that the training translated into higher revenues per member generated through collective commercialization.     

The role of health,experience, and educational attainment in agricultural production: Evidence from smallholders in Burkina Faso

We apply parametric and nonparametric methods to data from smallholders in Burkina Faso and assess the role that human capital characteristics play in the agricultural production process. Our results point to the technology‐changing nature of health, education, and experience. However, effects are rather heterogeneous. The productivity elasticity of health is much larger for households in the lowest landholding quintiles, while returns to experience are larger for households in the upper quintile. In terms of policy implications, our results suggest that productivity can be stimulated through the allocation of expenditure to social services that enhance certain types of human capital. Interventions aimed at improving the health status of households with smaller landholdings could have particularly strong welfare effects.     

Migration and technical efficiency in cereal production: evidence from Burkina Faso

This article uses a double bootstrap procedure and survey data from Burkina Faso in a two‐stage estimation to explore ways in which continental and intercontinental migration determine efficiency in cereal production of rural households. Findings suggest that continental migration has a positive relation and intercontinental migration no relation with technical efficiency. For continental migrant households, migration has removed surplus male labor, a cause for inefficiency in production. Intercontinental migration leads to a gender imbalance in the household, which cannot be compensated for by investments in farm equipment. The failure of intercontinental migration to transform cereal production from traditional to modern is attributed to an imperfect market environment.     

Conflict,Power and Tourism on Lombok

This paper analyses how different power relationships between tourism developers and operators and the local Sasak community affected tourism development on the island of Lombok, Indonesia. This study is set against the background of local and national tensions, and how these also have impacted on tourism. Two case studies are presented. The first example describes how tourism developers, operating under a system of privilege in the Soeharto era, attempted to force land acquisition at Rowok, in the south of Lombok. The subsequent protracted legal case has delayed any tourism development in this area. The second example describes a model of co-operative power relationships between the management of the Holiday Inn Resort and the local Sasak community at Mangsit, north of the main Senggigi Beach resort area. Local people are employed in a range of permanent positions, and there is clear evidence of a harmonious relationship between the hotel and the community. During three days of rioting in January 2000, the local community was unwavering in its support of this hotel. It is suggested that the way in which tourism developers and operators link with the local community is an essential indicator for tourism within the context of sustainable development.     

Sustaining Complement Quality for Digital Product Platforms: A Case Study of the Philips Hue Ecosystem

Innovation in a digital world increasingly revolves around open platforms that consist of a core technology and a large variety of complementary products developed by an ecosystem of independent complementors. The platform ecosystem literature has mainly focused on indirect network effects arising from the quantity of complements, with little attention to the quality of complements, despite the importance of quality for the complementary value that drives platform ecosystems. Because digital products are malleable and dependent on the ever‐evolving ecosystem, we advance a relational and dynamic conceptualization of complement quality. Drawing on a systematic, in‐depth qualitative case study of the Philips Hue connected lighting platform and its complementary third‐party apps, we study how and why complement quality is sustained over time. By analyzing apps and their updates, we developed a process model that explains pathways through which complement quality is enhanced, maintained, or deteriorates. Changes in the platform core, changes in other ecosystem elements, and idiosyncratic connections by users result in expanding affordances, materializing glitches, and emerging obsolescence. Without further action, glitches and obsolescence lead to deteriorating quality. Joint action of complementors, platform owners, and users is needed to act upon affordances, glitches, and obsolescence, in order to maintain integrity and enhance functionality. This paper contributes to the literature on innovation in platform ecosystems by explaining the dynamic and relational nature of complement quality in a digital platform ecosystem and showing the interdependence of ecosystem members (the triad between platform owner, complementors, and users) in sustained development efforts.     

Promoting the role of farmer‐based organizations for value chain integration: the tension between a program's targeting and an organization's investment strategy

We use new data on 500 Farmer‐Based Organizations (FBOs) in Ghana and regression analysis to reveal determinants of collective investments and the case of the Millennium Development Authority's (MiDA) agricultural program in Ghana to demonstrate that development programs offering hard incentives may be counterproductive in promoting collective action. We show that when a program sets criteria for participation and offers in‐cash and in‐kind support to selected FBOs, it may promote rent‐seeking and crowd out equity capital formation. This is so because FBOs may have formed for the sole purpose of benefitting from incentives offered by the program and thus lack an economic justification, which is an important condition for progression through the cooperative life cycle. Further, by setting stringent participation criteria, the program may end up selecting younger organizations while it is the more consolidated organizations that are able to connect to business development services (BDS) and engage in more offensive collective action.     

Infracapacitación,recuperación,pérdida del empleo y jubilación de trabajadores de edad en entornos de oficina. Estudio de cohorte prospectivo

Con una muestra de trabajadores de edad tomada del Maastricht Cohort Study, los autores investigan empíricamente la prevalencia y la evolución de la infracapacitación autopercibida y sus efectos en la necesidad de recuperación de los trabajadores, su riesgo de pérdida del empleo y sus intenciones de jubilación de 2012 a 2014. Encuentran la infracapacitación asociada a los dos primeros indicadores, pero no al tercero. Concluyen que es importante distinguir entre infracapacitación global o en determinadas competencias y que, en aras del empleo sostenible, conviene hacer un seguimiento del problema a lo largo de la vida profesional para intervenir a tiempo y evitar sus consecuencias.