数字平台生态系统:概念基础、研究现状与未来展望

Digital platform ecosystem:Conceptual basis,research status and future prospects

近年来,大量进行生态化战略的数字平台企业蓬勃发展,涌现出许多有价值的研究工作。然而,由于不同研究领域使用了各自的术语、理论和方法,造成了在许多重要问题上的理论分歧,这不仅会造成实践层面的模棱两可,更会阻碍数字平台生态系统研究的进一步发展与融合。基于此,本文在明晰概念的基础上,通过对经济学视角、技术视角、战略视角、组织视角等不同研究流派核心观点的梳理,形成对数字平台生态系统研究的系统归纳,并在此基础上提出理论框架进一步阐述数字平台生态系统可能的研究方向,以促进未来研究的发展与融合。

In recent years,a large number of digital platform enterprises with ecological strategies have flourished and many valuable research works have emerged.However,different research fields use their own terms,theories and methods,resulting in theoretical differences on many important issues,which will not only cause ambiguity in practice,but also hinder the further development and integration of digital platform ecosystem researches.Therefore,this study attempts to systematize the researches related to digital platform ecosystem by sorting out the core views of different research schools.On this basis,this study further expounds the possible research directions of digital platform ecosystem in the future,contributes knowledge to the development of platform ecosystem in the face of the digital economy.Some existing studies have confused the concepts of"platform","platform ecosystem"and"digital platform ecosystem"to a certain extent.This study firstly clarifies the definitions of platform,platform ecosystem and digital platform ecosystem to avoid the ambiguity and confusion of similar concepts.At the same time,this study selects 368 papers that are highly relevant to digital platform ecosystem based on the differences in the concepts and research content of platform,platform ecosystem and digital platform ecosystem,and conducts a statistical analysis of the literature.Secondly,this study compares the research focus of the economic perspective,technical perspective,organizational perspective and strategic perspective by reviewing the literature related to digital platform ecosystem.The economics perspective views platforms primarily as two-sided markets,focuses on the network effects,platform competition and interdependence of different aspects of the market.Technical perspective emphasizes platform as system,focusing on technical architecture design and architecture evaluation of digital platform ecosystem.The organizational perspective explicitly conceptualizes the platform and complementors as a unique form of organization:the meta-organization.The strategic perspective views platforms as a way to find strategic coherence,focuses on the organizational and governance characteristics specific to platform to extend existing strategy theory and examine how complementors use different strategies to influence their value creation activities.Finally,this study proposes directions for more in-depth exploration of future research themes,research content and research design from the perspectives of economics,technology,organization and strategy,integrates the views of various research schools and proposes a theoretical framework,in order to promote the development and integration of future research.This study attempts to break through the isolation between research schools through a systematic literature review to achieve the sorting and integration of cross-disciplinary research.It contributes to the future study of digital platform ecosystem that closely links platform phenomena with classical theories,realize dynamic,richer research scenarios and diverse research methods.The main contributions of this study are as follows.Firstly,drawing on previous researches,we provide definitions and conceptualizations of platform,platform ecosystem and digital platform ecosystem to avoid confusion between these three concepts.Secondly,this study summarizes the core issues of existing research from economic perspective,technical perspective,organizational perspective and strategic perspective,and helps to generate more dialogue across different research schools.Thirdly,we propose possible future research directions for the digital platform ecosystem and hope to make more rapid progress in future research and practice,thus contributing to the study of the digital platform ecosystem.