Adapting new capabilities or enhancing functionality? Two sequence patterns of capability redeem in platform ecosystems

Platform ecosystem participants often draw from capabilities provided to them by other actors in the ecosystem. While heralded as a driver of innovation, it is unclear how exactly platform evolution is affected by this dynamic. In this short paper we apply event sequence analysis to extract and analyse sequential patterns related to capability redeem – i.e. the internalization and subsequent utilization of external capabilities – on platform ecosystems. We find that development sequences differ in their order of events depending on whether a new capability is being integrated as opposed to the capability being put to use to create novel functionality. In particular, we find evidence for two sequence patterns. First, the platform adapting to new resources and incorporating fresh capabilities, leading to little changes in the functionality of the platform. Second, newly gained capabilities are put to use to enhance platform functionality, incurring substantial adjustments to its external behaviour. Located in information systems research on platform-ecosystems these initial findings present potential for future studies.