Bounded generativity: contextualising interdependencies between architecture, ecosystem, and environment in digital product innovation

Nandi, Anulekha (2024) Bounded generativity: contextualising interdependencies between architecture, ecosystem, and environment in digital product innovation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

Existing theorisation on digital product innovation remains predicated on a particular architectural form (modularity) and mode (unbounded generativity) of organising at scale participation of heterogeneous actors in an ecosystem. Despite the widely accepted role of product architectures in organising digital product innovation there has been limited academic engagement beyond the dynamics of modular design and its proximate context of the ecosystem. While contextualist research within information systems acknowledges the existence of wider systemic conditions underlying IS innovation, this has not received adequate attention within digital product innovation. This thesis builds on existing literature to understand the nature of interdependencies between the architecture, its proximate context of the ecosystem, and the distant context of the wider environment with the aim of developing a contextualised theory of digital product innovation for an alternative architectural form. To augment and extend existing theory, this research studies the design and development of an agent-based simulation model for forced displacement. It uses Kleine’s Choice Framework, adapted for this study, to understand how different conditions of possibility within the proximate and distant contexts shape operational and substantive choices within a digital product’s ongoing development. It follows a process research approach to unpack the sequence of events, its constituent elements, and causal trajectories over time. It is based on an in-depth case study constructed through year-long field work with the development team along with the study of associated documents and reports. The research contributes to the theory on digital product innovation by unpacking how this trilateral interdependency creates opportunity structures at different stages of the development process which shape and bound the generative potential of digital products. This thesis demonstrates how this occurs through complementary resource-relationship configurations which negotiate the systemic conditions of multiple environmental drivers and technical conditions of a hybrid digital architecture.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Anulekha Nandi
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > ZA Information resources
Sets:	Departments > Management
Supervisor:	Madon, Shirin and Whitley, Edgar A.
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4726

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