Interfirm Exchange and Innovation in Platform Ecosystems: Evidence from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference

Platform firms’ success depends on complementary innovation. This paper studies the relation between opportunities for interfirm exchange and complementary innovation. An empirical study of a sample of app developer firms attending Apple’s 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference suggests three findings. First, the opportunity to exchange stimulated innovation in the form of major app updates that received positive consumer feedback. Second, the effects were more pronounced for older and larger firms, potentially because these firms have more experience and resources to leverage exchanges and safeguard against knowledge spillovers. Third, part of the effects may be attributed to learning and collaborations. This paper was accepted by Anandhi Bharadwaj, information systems.