Platform-based innovation ecosystems: Entering new markets through holographic strategies

The platformization seems to be a demiurgic force, increasingly (re)shaping this millennium and its socio-economic, technological and physical structures, institutions, and human lives. Innovation ecosystems are experiencing this platformization, leading to the rise of platform-based innovation ecosystems. However, the industrial and managerial literature still lacks a shared definition, a consistent theoretical and strategic framework to explain how platform-based innovation ecosystems emerge and replicate from market to market. This conceptual work attempts to fill those gaps by integrating the extant literature on innovation ecosystems in two ways. First, moving from the literature on innovation ecosystems and industry platforms, using systems thinking framing, it explains the platformization of innovation ecosystems through the double lens structure-system. Second, it identifies the holographic strategy as one of the typical patterns featuring platform-based innovation ecosystem envelopment beyond extant market boundaries. These conceptualizations have insightful theoretical, managerial, and policy implications. In particular, the work discusses the ecosystem as a valid unit of analysis for understanding such an unprecedented shaped-by-platform landscape. Then, it describes the growth strategies of the platform-based innovation ecosystem supporting the platform sponsor in mastering multipoint competition. Eventually, the study pinpoints crucial issues for policymakers in regulating the impact that platformization is having on society. • Platformization is (re)shaping this millennium and its socio-economic structures. • Innovation ecosystems are experiencing this platformization, leading to the rise of platform-based innovation ecosystems. • This study explains the platformization of the innovation ecosystem through the double lens structure-system. • The holographic envelopment is identified as one of the typical growth strategies of platform-based innovation ecosystems.