Governing third-party development through platform boundary resources

Third-party development is increasingly relevant for software platform owners seeking to generatecomplementary assets in the form of applications. The governance of such development involvestwo seemingly conflicting goals: the maintenance of platform control and the transfer of designcapability to users. A key element in simultaneously accommodating these goals is platformboundary resources. However, so far, there is a dearth of theoretical accounts of the role ofboundary resources and the process by which such resources can be used to govern third-partydevelopment. Drawing on case study research of Apple’s iPhone developer program, wesynthesize boundary objects theory and innovation networks literature to develop a processperspective of third-party development governance through boundary resources. In doing this, ourresearch extends and complements existing governance literature and contributes new knowledgeabout an alternative form of system development