Presentation at department weekly research seminar during research visit at Freie Universität Berlin in November 2017 Full title: Exploring platform boundary resources with a data-driven approach: first insights on digital ecosystem for work CC license applies only to sections that I have personally created.

1. Exploring platform boundary
resources with a data-driven
approach: first insights on digital
ecosystem for work
Jukka Huhtamäki
@jnkka
November 21, 2017
Research seminar
Freie Universität Berlin

2. Background

3. Boundary
resources
“the software tools and
regulations that serve as
the interface for the
arm’s length relationship
between the platform
owner and the
application developer”
(Ghazawneh &
Henfridsson, 2013)
21.11.2017 3

4. Suggestions: what was the
first ICT-related Boundary
Resource ever?

5. 21.11.2017 5
https://www.idtech.com/blog/ancient-or-at-least-older-than-me-technology-the-memex/
Vannevar Bush (1945):
As We May Think

6. My worldview on APIs and
digital work
• Memex (Bush, 1945)
• The Mother of all Demos (Engelbart, 1968)
• Xanadu (Nelson, 1960)
• REST & HATEOS (Fielding, 2000)
• AJAX (Garrett, 2005)
• Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005)
21.11.2017 6

7. Concepts

8. APIs as boundary resources
• Weiss & Gangadharan (2010)
• Evans & Basole (2016)
• Basole (2016)
• Huhtamäki et al. (2017)
• Basole (2018)
21.11.2017 8

9. Why APIs?
• APIs are replacing “traditional” interfirm
relationships
• APIs are lightweight boundary resources that
allow for complementors to create value for
the focal companies
• APIs are artifacts of both lightweight software
development and business strategy21.11.2017 9

10. API vs. platform economy
21.11.2017 10

11. Image: http://440marketinggroup.com/

13. 21.11.2017 13
(Evans and Basole, 2016;
Basole, 2016)

14. 21.11.2017 14
(Evans and Basole, 2016;
Basole, 2016)

15. Why boundary resources?
de Reuver, Sørensen, and Basole (2015)
“The units of analysis chosen must allow for the
theoretical treatment of the fundamental
characteristics of digital platform characteristics
and innovation arrangements. […] The
boundary resource concept could be such unit
of analysis.”
21.11.2017 15

16. Digital work
Stein, Jensen, and Hekkala (2015):
“To make sense of this distributed nature of work,
we build on the concept of liminality, which refers to
an ‘in-betweenness’, where times and tasks of work
and leisure, spaces and technologies of the office
and home tend to blend.”
21.11.2017Freie Universität Berlin 2017 16

17. Digital entrepreneurship
Kelestyn and Henfridsson (2014):
“seizing digitally enabled innovation opportunities
discovered in their everyday life to build new business
ventures.”
“future shaping practices […] by digitally empowered
user(s) with an entrepreneurial vision to address the
current needs in imaginative and innovative ways.”
21.11.2017 17

18. 21.11.2017 18
https://twitter.com/jnkka/status/932639674128130049

19. We ask
• How to study the boundary resources for
digital work with a data-driven approach?
• Does a specific boundary resources sector
exist for digital work or is digital work
ubiqituos – a layer on top of sectors?
• How are APIs transforming (digital) work and
organizations?
21.11.2017 19

20. 21.11.2017 20

21. Method
• Empirical context: ProgrammableWeb
• Data collection using crawling and scraping
• Data-driven visual network analytics
• Sensemaking, critical realist data analysis
• Semi-automated data curation process
21.11.2017 21

22. Method: Ostinato Model
21.11.2017 22(Huhtamäki, Russell, Rubens & Still, 2015)

24. Network modeling
1. How are the API-categories co-used?
2. How are APIs co-used?

25. API category co-use
21.11.2017 25
Tools Collaboration
Social
Search
Filesharing

26. 21.11.2017 26

27. 21.11.2017 27Filtering and visualization: Hannes Rothe

28. API co-use
• Cf. co-citation analysis
Three resulting connections (here
regions):
Twitter - Twitter Search
Twitter - Google App Engine
Twitter Search - Google App Engine

29. 21.11.201729http://bit.ly/apicousefubdemo2017

30. Conclusions

31. Takeaways
• Digital work is not a clear segment in the API
ecosystem; we suggest that is is a (meso-
level) layer instead
• API co-use is not API usage
• Public APIs vs. Private APIs
• API ecosystem is particularly flexible for
actors to offer, consume, and create services

32. Future work
• Developing (ML-based) means to classify digital work-
related APIs
• Generative/transformative mechanism of digital work
(traditional work in the digital vs. born-digital work)
• Introducing dynamics to the analysis: API diffusion
studies
• How will the changes in legislation impact the digital
work ecosystem (GDPR)
21.11.2017 32