The Journal of the Association for Information Systems published on October 1, 2019 the "DYNO theory" explaining how to design, control, grow and harness self-enforcing network effects around Web-based Service platforms. The research team consists of Professor Christian Janiesch (Wuerzburg University), Professor Christoph Rosenkranz (Cologne University), and Dr. Ulrich Scholten, founder of VentureSkies.
Service platforms make available software applications as a service to end-users. Platforms enable noticeable economic benefits for scaling and transforming a business. Their long-term competitiveness is ensured in controlled cooperation with channel intermediaries and network partners. Hence, service platforms must be designed to harness self-enforcing effects of value generation, so-called network effects. In an exaptation of existing knowledge, the article presents an information systems design theory to inform the design of methods that analyze, describe, and guide the design of service platforms through the means of causal loops and control methods. The article describes the theory’s purpose and scope as well as the underlying justificatory knowledge behind the constructs and principles of form and function. The design theory covers the design of all service platform participants and activities as well as their transactions and influences in areas of staged platform authority, using enforcing and incentivizing control methods. The authors are able to demonstrate the principles of implementation with an expository instantiation and apply it to the M-Engineering service platform, which offers surveillance, control, and data acquisition solutions. Furthermore, the authors present and discuss testable propositions and a study design to evaluate the design principles.
Get the full article at the Journal of the Association for Information Systems.