Digitally connected ecosystems, particularly those centered on platforms, have transformed how organizations innovate and create value through interorganizational collaboration. This managerial and strategic perspective article examines leadership in such ecosystems, where traditional hierarchical control gives way to orchestration of diverse, autonomous actors, including platform owners, complementors, and partners. Key challenges include aligning strategic interests without direct authority, coordinating distributed innovation activities, balancing openness with control, and managing interdependencies to avoid fragmentation or power imbalances. Drawing on recent literature, the article highlights ecosystem leadership roles that emphasize facilitation, governance mechanisms, and relational coordination to foster collective value creation. A conceptual model is proposed to illustrate the structure of platform-based innovation networks, depicting flows of coordination, innovation exchange, strategic alignment, and feedback loops that link leadership actions to collaboration quality and innovation outcomes. The discussion underscores the need for adaptive leadership capabilities to navigate tensions in these meta-organizational forms. By addressing these dynamics, leaders can enhance ecosystem resilience, drive collaborative innovation, and translate interorganizational efforts into sustained competitive advantage in digitally connected environments. This perspective offers strategic insights for managers seeking to orchestrate effective collaboration across platform-based networks.
Algorithmically mediated markets now dominate data-driven industries, where visibility, pricing, ranking, and resource allocation are governed by opaque automated systems rather than direct human negotiation. This theory-development article synthesizes peer-reviewed studies to advance a novel conceptual explanation of strategic risk—the emergent, self-reinforcing exposure arising from the interplay of uncertainty, dependence on algorithmic intermediaries, and competitive volatility. Traditional strategy frameworks fail to capture how platform ecosystems invert firm boundaries, how algorithmic opacity exacerbates information asymmetry, and how automated feedback loops accelerate market instability. We argue that strategic risk is not merely an external shock but a systemic property generated by algorithmic governance itself. Dependence on digital infrastructures locks organizations into structural vulnerabilities, while rapid changes in recommendation and ranking algorithms create unpredictable volatility that propagates across ecosystems. The article develops six theoretical propositions that delineate causal pathways from algorithmic mediation to heightened risk exposure and identifies organizational responses that may either mitigate or inadvertently amplify instability. A conceptual model visualizes these dynamics, highlighting directional flows and reinforcing feedback loops. By reframing strategic risk as endogenous to algorithmically governed markets, the framework offers new avenues for digital business and strategy theory, emphasizing the need for algorithmic resilience capabilities. Practical implications underscore the limits of conventional risk management in platform-dominated environments.
Digital economies are increasingly characterized by firms that create and capture value without owning the core assets on which their operations depend. This theory-development article advances a coordination-centric perspective to explain how focal firms achieve competitive advantage in decentralized digital ecosystems. Integrating research on asset-light business models, platform governance, and distributed coordination, the article identifies a fundamental shift from ownership-based control to orchestration-based advantage. It argues that firms no longer rely on asset possession but on their capacity to structure and align interactions among legally independent actors through platforms, standardized interfaces, data-exchange protocols, and relational governance mechanisms. The proposed framework conceptualizes the firm as a coordination hub embedded within a network of externally owned assets, where strategic influence is exercised through architectural design and adaptive governance rather than hierarchical authority. It elucidates key mechanisms—including dependence management, dynamic repositioning, and feedback-driven governance—that enable firms to sustain performance under conditions of distributed control and heightened interdependence. Six theoretical propositions specify the causal relationships linking orchestration intensity, ecosystem participation, and resilience to sustained competitive advantage. By reconceptualizing firm boundaries as permeable and relational, the article extends digital business and strategic management theory into fully decentralized contexts. It contributes by clarifying the micro-foundations of non-ownership strategy and by demonstrating how coordination capabilities substitute for ownership as the primary locus of control. The framework further offers managerial guidance for designing and governing ecosystems in which influence must be achieved without asset ownership, positioning orchestration capability as the defining source of advantage in the digital age.
Digital ecosystems represent a fundamental shift in competitive dynamics, moving the unit of analysis from individual firms to interdependent networks organized around platform orchestrators. This review synthesizes contemporary research on how competitive strategy evolves in platform-centered markets, examining the transition from firm-centric to ecosystem-centric competition. We analyze how platform structures create new forms of interdependence, governance mechanisms, and power asymmetries that fundamentally reshape strategic positioning. The review identifies three core themes: ecosystem structure and platform-centered competition, governance and strategic asymmetry, and value dynamics between creation and capture. Our analysis reveals that competitive advantage in digital ecosystems increasingly derives from relational positioning, complementor management, and the ability to navigate tensions between openness and control. We identify critical gaps in the literature, particularly regarding complementor agency, dynamic governance evolution, and the strategic implications of generative AI platforms. The review concludes by proposing an integrated framework for understanding ecosystem competition and outlining priorities for future strategic management research.
Institute for Management, Business, and Accounting Studies