Nascent Design Principles Enabling Digital Service Platforms

Abstract

To facilitate innovation of value-enabling IT services in a service ecosystem, digital service platforms are needed. However, existing service platforms, neither fully inscribes premises of the service dominant logic, nor the principles of open innovation. Seldom are they digital. We argue that there is a lack of consolidated normative theory of how to design digital service innovation platforms. This is problematic, because it hampers actors in service ecosystems to combine and advance their capabilities. To this end, researchers and practitioners have jointly designed and evaluated a digital service platform using Action Design Research methodology. Accordingly, the overall purpose of this paper is to present intermediate results from the evaluation of the digital service platform and to contribute nascent design principles enabling researchers and practitioners to leverage other instances of purposive digital service platforms.