Dr Carsten Sorensen MAR 4.34

This course is compulsory on the MPhil/PhD in Management - Information Systems and Innovation. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course deals with the dynamics of large- scale digital service platforms, their associated ecosystems, blockchains and AI architectures. It is based on the extant research into modularity, platforms, boundary resources, digital ecosystem, and digital innovation governance and value creation dynamics across the fields of management, innovation, and information technology studies. The aim to ground the students in the traditional conceptualisations of IS and use this as the base for exploring the theoretical challenges brought about by a variety of digital innovations. The course further examines the components, operations, and trends of digital innovations, for example focusing on the challenges of business digitalisation and platformisation for the distributed provision of mobile apps and uses this example as a basis for a broader consideration of platform innovation dynamics. The course also addresses managerial and technological challenges associates with the search for value creation in the context of digital innovation deployments

This course is delivered through seminars across Michaelmas Term.Teaching hours will be commensurate with a usual half unit taught masters course but note that teaching may take a different format and/or structure in 2021/22.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Michaelmas Term

Students will be expected to produce 1 presentation and 1 essay in the MT.

One PowerPoint presentation on a course theme to be handed in week 2 for feedback and one 1500-word essay on the same theme to be handed in for assessment by week 6

Baldwin, C. Y. & K. B. Clark (2000): Design Rules, Vol. 1: The Power of Modularity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Benkler, Y. (2006): The Wealth of Networks. Yale University Press

Cennamo, C., Marchesi, C., & Meyer, T. (2020). Two sides of the same coin? Decentralized versus proprietary blockchains and the performance of digital currencies. Academy of Management Discoveries, 6(3), 382-405.

Chandler Jr, A. D. (1977): The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Garud, R., A. Kumaraswamy, & R. Langlois, ed. (2003): Managing in the Modular Age: Architecture, Networks and Organisations. Blackwell.

Gawer, A., ed. (2009): Platforms, Markets and Innovation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Iansiti, M. & R. Levien (2004): The Keystone Advantage. Harvard Business Press.

Kallinikos, J. (2006): The Consequences of Information. Edward Elgar

Kazan, E., Tan, C.-W., Lim, E. T. K., Sørensen, C., & Damsgaard, J. (2018). Disentangling Digital Platform Competition: The Case of UK Mobile Payment Platforms. Journal of Management Information Systems — special issue on Financial IS, Underlying Technologies, and the FinTech Revolution, 35(1), 180-219.

Leonardi, P. M., B. A. Nardi, & J. Kallinikos, ed. (2012): Materiality and Organizing. OUP.

Parker, G. G., Alstyne, M. W. and Choudary, S. P (20160: Platform Revolution. New York: Norton.

Pickering, A. (1995): The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency & Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Tiwana, A. (2013): Platform ecosystems: aligning architecture, governance, and strategy. Newnes.

Utterback, J. (1994): Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.

Boudreau, K. (2010): Open Platform Strategies and Innovation: Granting Access vs. Devolving Control. Management Science, vol. 56, no. 10, pp. 1849-1872.

Boudreau, K. J. (2012): Let a thousand flowers bloom? An early look at large numbers of software app developers and patterns of innovation. Organization Science, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 1409-1427.

de Reuver, M., Sørensen, C., & Basole, R. (2018). The Digital Platform: A Research Agenda. Journal of Information Technology, 33(2), 124-135.

Eaton, B. D., S. Elaluf-Calderwood, C. Sørensen, & Y. Yoo (2015): Distributed Tuning of Boundary Resources: The Case of Apple’s iOS Service System. MIS Quarterly: Special Issue on Service Innovation in a Digital Age, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 217-243.

Eisenmann, T., G. Parker, & M. Van Alstyne (2011): Platform envelopment. Strategic Management Journal, vol. 32, no. 12, pp. 1270-1285.

Evans, P. C. & R. C. Basole (2016): Revealing the API Ecosystem and Enterprise Strategy using Visual Analytics. Communications of the ACM, vol. 59, no. 2.

Ghazawneh, A. & Henfridsson, O. (2013) Balancing Platform Control and External Contribution in Third-Party Development: The Boundary Resources Model. Information Systems Journal, 23(2): 173-192.

Henfridsson, O., L. Mathiassen, & F. Svahn (2014): Managing Technological Change in the Digital Age: The Role of Architectural Frames. Journal of Information Technology, vol. 29, pp. 27-43.

Kallinikos, J., Aaltonen, A., & Marton, A. (2013) The Ambivalent Ontology of Digital Artifacts. MIS Quarterly, 37(2): 357-370.

Parker, G. G. & M. W. Van Alstyne (2005): Two-Sided Network Effects: A Theory of Information Product Design. Management Science, vol. 51, no. 10, pp. 1494-1504.

Tiwana, A., B. Konsynsky, & A. A. Bush (2010): Platform Evolution: Coevolution of Platform Architecture, Governance, and Environmental Dynamics. Information Systems Research, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 675-687.

Thomas, L., E. Autio, & D. Gann (2014): Architectural Leverage: Putting Platforms in Context. The Academy of Management Perspectives, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 198-219.

Wareham, J., P. B. Fox, & J. L. Cano Giner (2014): Technology Ecosystem Governance. Organization Science, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 1195-1215.

Take-home assessment (100%).

The course will be assessed by a 24-hour take home exam at the start of the LT.