The governance of platform development processes: A metaphor and a simulation model

Platform market competition has been extensively researched, but the governance of the platform development process prior to market launch has received little attention. We develop a system dynamics simulation model using the avalanche game as a metaphor for platform development. We describe a typical platform development process, and show how this process corresponds to the game. To examine the role of incentives for consensus building in platform development, we extend the original simulation model of the avalanche game using literature on platform development. This provides insights about how platform governance incentives influence the platform development process. Specifically, we find that under high degrees of urgency, consensus is achieved more quickly when a greater number of participants are involved in a standards committee. We explain this counterintuitive notion by making use of the literature on decision-making in networks of interdependencies.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Economics of Technology and InnovationMulti Actor System