Strategies for Complementor Participation: Contrasting Open Innovation and Resource-based View

This paper analyses strategies for platform owners to increase complementor participation on the platform. Specifically, it draws on open innovation (OI) and the resource-based view (RBV) to isolate three drivers of complementor participation, namely breadth of content offerings and boundary resources (related to OI), and exclusive content (associated with RBV). We hypothesize that higher levels of each of these drivers increase the platform's attractiveness to future complementors and increase complementor participation. Based on negative binomial fixed effects regressions in the context of video game consoles, we find that boundary resources and exclusive content, but not breadth of content offerings, are positively related to complementor participation. This shows that drivers from both OI and RBV relate to complementor participation. The results have implications for the orchestration of platform ecosystems.