Balancing Competition and Cooperation in IT Value Cocreation: The Case of Digital Platform Ecosystems

Cooperation and competition in IT value cocreation are of increasing importance as more firms seek to be agile and innovative by participating in collaborative environments. Firms are actively working in digital platform ecosystems and establishing alliances with other firms - including their customers and direct competitors - to innovate more quickly than the competition. However, little has been shed regarding how firms cocreate IT value in digital platforms and coopetitive dynamics. Thus, the goal of this paper is to explore and organize a set of mechanisms on how firms balance competition and cooperation in IT value cocreation and digital platform ecosystems. We conduct a single case study composed of three firms (customer, cloud provider and systems integrator). Then, we develop a conceptual model describing mechanisms and practices to effectively orchestrate the relationship between trust and coopetition. Our findings support firms when cocreating IT value in co-opetitive environments and provide a basis for future work on coopetition dynamics and IT-based value cocreation.