Managing digital business platforms: A continued exercise in balancing renewal and refinement

Central to the evolution of a digital business platform is the organization's ability to balance exploration (renewal) and exploitation (refinement) simultaneously. Drawing on prior research-including digital platforms, contradictory tensions, and organizational ambidexterity-and our own experience investigating digital business platforms in organizations, this article provides insights into how executives can manage this evolution successfully. More specifically, we present a framework recognizing three pairs of organizational capabilities (i.e., identifying-nourishing, expanding-legitimating, and augmenting-embedding) that enable balancing renewal and refinement of the platform over time. We close by providing critical managerial practices that executives can use in anticipating, adjusting, and evaluating the evolution of a digital business platform over time, including its initiation, development, and growth. (C) 2020 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.