Logic of digital competition: A framework for impact of digital architecture on firm performance in software based ecosystems

Pervasive and networked use of digital technologies has disrupted business strategies, industry structure and emergence of newer organizational forms with firms increasingly competing as software based ecosystems increasingly driven by convergence, changing materiality relationship between form and function of products and inter firm relationships. Decomposition of digital ecosystems into core and complementary module can potentially enable combinatorial innovation and asymmetric business models of platform providers and complementors. The layered modular architecture of digital artifacts, modularity and generativity of the ecosystem architecture help the evolutionary changes to the ecosystem through voluntaristic innovation by heterogeneous contributors which is a critical driver of ecosystem success. In this study using multi-theoretic lens of resource based view, platform architecture, strategic logic of opportunity and strategy as practice we develop a nomological network to explore the impact of platform architecture on complementor firm performance and posit a mediating role of firm's dynamic capabilities enabling competitive action.