Research On The Driving Mechanism Of APP Iterative Innovation And Its Performance Based On The Platform Ecosystem Actors' Aspect

With the recent development of digital technology and pervasive digitization,digital innovation has become the main driving force for transforming industry and promoting economic value substantially.In conjunction with this trend,mobile software applications(apps),as an important form of digital innovation,has driven much changing in people's life and industry revolution.The number of apps is growing rapidly,which shows that the app industry is prospering.However,in contrast with the wide recognition of the prosperity of apps,its development faces great challenges.Specifically,on the one hand,because so many apps exist,there is intensely homogeneous competition in the market.On the other hand,user needs are uncertain,volatile,complex and ambiguous.In particular,the switching cost of end users is low.Due to these challenges,actual thrive of an individual app are more somber.Many apps have low rate of survival,user activity and user stickiness.To maintain competitive advantage and satisfy a wide range of dynamic and personal user needs,developers are often to constantly release new versions of apps with adding new functionalities and features on a monthly or even bi-weekly basis.Although it is necessary to provide the high update frequency,developers are always faced with some strategic choices in terms of how to drive the quality of apps with rapid iterative innovation? How to choose one types of innovation to make their performance better.These strategic choices attract much attention of app industry and academia.However,studies on app iterative innovation are still in the early stage.At present,less is known about which are the factors that influence an app iterative innovation and how to impact on innovation.Moreover,the research on the relationship between iterative innovation and performance is fragmented,and the conclusions are inconsistent.Particularly,the extant literature always focuses on a single perspective,and there is still a lack of multiple perspectives to analyze the driving mechanism of app iterative innovation and its impact on performance.Thus,based on the related theories of user involvement,organization learning and platform ecosystem,using the combination of empirical and qualitative research methods,and the app data collected from i OS platforms in China,this dissertation examines the following three research question:First,based on the perspective of user involvement and organization learning theory,this dissertation empirically investigates the strategic value of online user reviews and developer's prior experience base on app iterative innovation.The findings show that the volume of online reviews is positively associated with app iterative innovation,and there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between the valence of online reviews and both of app iterative novelty and iterative speed;developer's ecosystem experience is positively related with app iterative novelty and iterative speed,and there is a U-shaped relationship between development experience diversity and both of app iterative novelty and iterative speed.Further,based on the perspective of platform governance,we identified the moderating effect of platform owner's entry and platform recommendation on the relationship between online user reviews and iterative innovation,developer's experience base and iterative innovation.This research complements studies on the antecedents of app iterative innovation from user involvement and developer's perspective.Second,how does app iterative innovation influences their performance?Performance is the foundation of organizational development and attracts much attention on innovation research.this dissertation empirically investigates the impact mechanism of iterative innovation on app performance.The findings show that iterative novelty is positively associated with app performance,and there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between iterative speed and app performance.In particular,there is an interaction effect of iterative novelty and iterative speed on app performance.Further,based on the perspective of platform governance,we find that the platform owner's entry weakens the positive effect of iterative novelty on app performance,and the inverted U-shaped impact of iterative agility on app performance.In addition,platform recommendation enhances the inverted U-shaped impact of iterative agility on app performance,but does not moderate the relationship between iterative novelty and app performance.Third,given the actors of platform ecosystem,what are the configuration paths leading to high app iterative innovation,and which paths can result in good performance?Innovation that occurs in a platform ecosystem is not isolated,in contrast,are more complex and need to be co-created by the interactions of multiple actors.Therefore,based on the integrated framework of actors in platform ecosystem,we argue that the conditions from key actors in platform ecosystem,namely the platform owner,users and developers,will jointly lead to app iterative innovation.Specifically,this dissertation use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to investigate the configuration paths leading to high app iterative innovation.These empirical results show that there are five different paths leading to high app iterative agility,which could be summarized as four types: platform recommendation,developer and platform-recommendation,user and platformcompetition and synergism-driven path.There are six different paths leading to high app iterative novelty,which could be also summarized as four types: user and platformrecommendation,user and platform-competition,synergism,developer and platformdriven path.These findings indicate that the conditions from the platform owner,users and developers will jointly lead to iterative innovation.In addition,the paths shaped by different factors reflect different mechanisms and motivations of app iterative innovation,thus,they would have different effects on app performance.Our research reveals that the iterative innovation does not mean good app performance in the market.These conclusions may contribute to existing theoretical literature from the following three aspects: First,based on the perspective actors of platform ecosystem,this dissertation identifies more antecedents of iterative innovation from users and developers,and provides a more nuanced understanding in the effect mechanism of user feedback information and developer experience base on app iterative innovation,thus,these findings enrich the studies on user involvement and organization learning.Particularly,the dissertation further emphasizes the heterogeneity of participants in platform ecosystem and expands the relevant research of platform ecosystem with participants' perspective.Second,based on the contingency perspective,this dissertation explores the moderating effect of platform governance on the relationship between antecedents and app iterative innovation,as well as the relationship between iterative innovation and app performance.Thus,this dissertation highlights the contingency value of platform governance on complemental innovation based on the platform ecosystem,which may complement the insight into complemental innovation based on the platform ecosystem.Finally,based on the perspective actors of platform ecosystem and the configuration theory,we provide the integrated perspectives of high app iterative innovation by identifying interactions among platform owners,users and developers,and obtain multiple paths leading to high app iterative innovation.This dissertation contributes to studies on antecedents of app iterative innovation by expanding the research perspective and research tools.Then,we investigate the effects of different paths on app performance.The conclusion shows that different paths may have different effects on app performance,which helps to address the inconclusiveness in the relationship between iterative innovation and app performance.