Towards Platform Defined Business – Complementarity at the Spotlight

As markets become increasingly more competitive firms systematically move away from hierarchical integrated supply chains toward fragmented networks of strategic partnerships with external partners. Business practice indicate a growing number of busi-nesses relying on the platform organizational structures. For such constructs superior pro-duct quality and customer appeal maintain necessary but it is the breadth of the ecosystem of related product and services that has become a prerequisite for success. It implies the focus on third parties, complementors, who develop and deliver diverse content to plat-forms as well as enhance platform’s generativity. Although complementary relations should be the main reference while considering the network dynamics from different angles, the attention in the extant research gravitates toward inter-platform competition with platform owners as the central object. Thus, with the objective to contribute to the emerging lite-rature on industry platforms, this conceptual article discusses main challenges concerned with orchestrating arm’s length relationships with complementors, by departing from plat-form-owner-centered approach and focusing on behavior of interdepended contributors.