Firms generate innovations to profit from market opportunities, which are newly identified customer needs not yet being met in the market. The rising complexity of market opportunities requires collaboration among multiple partner firms. However, this multipartner collaboration increases transaction and production costs when generating innovations. To address these challenges, incumbents build B2B innovation platforms with mechanisms to reduce partners’ transaction and production costs. We do not yet know if and when partners would choose to use the incumbent’s traditional service innovation model or the B2B innovation platform and how this choice would affect the generativity and profitability of innovations for the incumbent and the partners. We used agent-based modeling and simulation to develop a theory to address these questions. We found that the complexity of market opportunities interacts with the B2B innovation platform’s transaction and production mechanisms to jointly affect whether partners use the platform and when the incumbent and partners achieve generativity and profitability. When the complexity of market opportunities is low, partners use the traditional service innovation model. As complexity increases to medium or high levels, partners begin to use the B2B innovation platform mechanisms to address the transaction and production challenges presented by the complexity of market opportunities. However, there are limits to how much the platform mechanisms can address these challenges. The complexity of market opportunities inhibits the emergence of network effects on B2B innovation platforms and limits the generativity and profitability of platform partners. There are diminishing benefits of investing in the platform’s transaction and production mechanisms, and complexity affects whether the platform owner or the partners profit from innovations generated on the platform.

中文翻译：

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B2B 创新平台的生成性和盈利能力：基于模拟的理论发展


企业通过创新来从市场机会中获利，这些机会是新发现的、市场上尚未满足的客户需求。市场机会日益复杂，需要多个合作伙伴公司之间的合作。然而，这种多伙伴协作在产生创新时增加了交易和生产成本。为了应对这些挑战，现有企业建立了 B2B 创新平台，并提供降低合作伙伴交易和生产成本的机制。我们还不知道合作伙伴是否以及何时会选择使用现有企业的传统服务创新模式或B2B创新平台，以及这种选择将如何影响现有企业和合作伙伴的创新生成力和盈利能力。我们使用基于代理的建模和模拟来开发解决这些问题的理论。我们发现，市场机会的复杂性与B2B创新平台的交易和生产机制相互作用，共同影响合作伙伴是否使用该平台以及现有者和合作伙伴何时实现生成性和盈利能力。当市场机会复杂度较低时，合作伙伴采用传统的服务创新模式。随着复杂性增加到中高级，合作伙伴开始利用B2B创新平台机制来应对市场机会复杂性带来的交易和生产挑战。然而，平台机制能够在多大程度上解决这些挑战是有限的。市场机会的复杂性抑制了B2B创新平台网络效应的出现，限制了平台合作伙伴的创造力和盈利能力。 投资平台交易和生产机制的收益正在递减，而复杂性会影响平台所有者或合作伙伴是否从平台上产生的创新中获利。