Dancing with wolves: how value creation and value capture dynamics affect complementor participation in industry platforms

Industry platforms shape the interactions among participating firms, especially between the platform owner and its complementors. However, little research has examined how such dynamics would influence the initial participation by complementors. Based on the coopetition perspective, we develop hypotheses about the relationship between platform owner's value appropriation potential and complementor participation, at platform initiation. Using a comprehensive dataset of open source software (OSS) platform initiations, this study empirically examines how the resource profiles of platform owner firms may affect complementor participation in the platform. We find that when the platform owner has higher percentage of sales from complementary market segments, the number of complementors for the platform is lower. Furthermore, the platform owner's sales growth positively moderates this relationship. The findings shed new lights on how the value creation and value appropriation dynamics between the platform owner and its complementors may shape the outcome of industry platform launching.