Make, Buy, or Join: Evaluating Platform Strategies of Established Companies

数字平台正在越来越多的行业中占据一席之地。传统的、非平台型商业模式的老牌公司面临着应对平台型竞争对手的压力。出租车行业在移动服务领域与优步等数字平台展开竞争，老牌银行公司有可能被为金融服务创建数字平台的金融科技公司绕过。我们可以观察到，老牌公司的反应要么是通过建立自己的数字平台(Make战略)，要么是收购数字平台以在竞争中站稳脚跟(购买战略)，或者是加入现有平台以从其覆盖范围中受益(加入战略)。然而，这些策略的成功好坏参半，从文献中还不清楚在什么情况下哪种策略是有希望的。在这个项目中，我将对成熟公司不同平台战略的成功进行定量的、行业层面的研究。考虑到广泛的数据访问和领先的管理研究，我将为这个项目访问宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院。在现有理论和我以前的工作的基础上，我将开发将不同平台策略与性能联系起来的假设。因此，我考虑了公司和行业特定的因素，如现有数字平台的主导程度。然后，我将收集有关财务业绩和公告数据的行业数据，以确定老牌公司实施平台战略的情况。在此基础上，运用线性回归分析方法进行事件研究，并对研究假设进行检验。根据这些结果，我通过提供关于平台战略成功的概括性结论，为正在进行的管理和信息系统研究界面上的讨论做出了贡献。有了这个项目，首先，我将能够使我的研究方法组合多样化。在我的论文中，我主要做了定性的工作，这个项目将提高我在定量方法方面的技能。其次，鉴于我与沃顿商学院出版颇丰的学者的密切合作，这个项目将帮助我提高自己开发理论和为顶级媒体写作的能力。第三，我将通过与沃顿商学院的学者联系，并跟进我2019年在波士顿逗留期间在麻省理工学院和哈佛大学的接触，来加强我的学术网络。沃顿商学院在研究和教学方面都是世界上最好的商学院之一。因此，除了与管理学研究领域的一些最好的学者合作外，参观沃顿商学院还会让我对世界级的教学有深刻的见解，这将启发我自己的教学风格。

Digital platforms are gaining ground in more and more industries. Established companies with traditional, non-platform business models are under pressure to react to platform-based competitors. The taxi industry competes with digital platforms for mobility services such as Uber and established banking companies are at risk to be bypassed by fintech companies that create digital platforms for financial services. We can observe established companies reacting either by building their own digital platform (make strategy), acquiring digital platforms in order to gain a foothold in the competition (buy strategy) or joining an existing platform to benefit from their reach (join strategy). However, success of these strategies is mixed and it remains unclear from literature what strategy is promising under what circumstances. I pose the research question ‘how do different platform strategies (i.e., make, buy, or join) impact the performance of established companies?’In this project, I will conduct a quantitative, industry-level study on the success of different platform strategies of established firms. I will visit the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for this project, given the extensive data access and the leading management research I can collaborate with. Building on existing theories and my previous work, I will develop hypotheses that link different platform strategies to performance. Thereby, I take company- and industry-specific factors into consideration such as the degree of domination by existing digital platforms. I will then collect industry data with regard to financial performance and announcement data to identify the implementation of platform strategies by established companies. Based on this data I will conduct an event study with linear regression analysis and test the hypotheses. With the results, I contribute to ongoing discussions at the interface of management and information systems research by providing generalizable findings on the success of platform strategies. With this project, first, I will be able to diversify my portfolio of research methods. I have worked mainly qualitatively during my dissertation and the project will enhance my skills with regard to quantitative methods. Second, the project will help me to enhance my capabilities to develop theory and to write for top-tier outlets, given my close collaboration with highly-published scholars at the Wharton School. Third, I will strengthen my academic network by connecting with scholars at the Wharton School and by following up on contacts at MIT and Harvard that I initiated during a stay in Boston in 2019. The Wharton School is one of the best business schools in the world both with regard to research and teaching. Thus, besides working with some of the best scholars from the field of management research, visiting the Wharton School will grant me insights into world-class teaching which will be an inspiration for my own teaching style.