Platform Openness: A Systematic Literature Review and Avenues for Future Research

Open platforms such as Facebook or Android have stimulated innovation and competition across industries. Information systems literature has analyzed platforms from a variety of perspectives. The aim of this paper is to synthesize and integrate extant interdisciplinary research on the concept of platform openness. Towards this end, we conducted a literature review and analyzed the results with deductive and inductive coding approaches. We identified five distinct themes: measurement frameworks, implementation mechanisms, drivers for opening and closing platforms, trade-offs in designing openness, and the impact of changing openness on ecosystems. We propose three avenues for future research: finding the optimal degree of platform openness, integrating perspectives on accessibility and transparency, and analyzing the influence of openness and other factors with configurational theories. This paper contributes to research on platforms by laying out the main themes and perspectives in the research stream of platform openness and by identifying areas for future research