Evolutionary Competition in Platform Ecosystems

Abstract

Intraplatform competition has received scant attention in prior studies, which predominantly study interplatform competition. We develop a middle-range theory of how complementarity between input control and a platform extension’s modularization—by inducing evolution—influences its performance in a platform market. Primary and archival data spanning five years from 342 Firefox extensions show that such complementarity fosters performance by accelerating an extension’s perpetual evolution.