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With the development of digitalization and interconnection, there is a growing need for enterprise customers to ensure the compatibility of the third-party components they are using in the manufacturing process, thus raising the integration requirements for the Industrial Internet platform and its third-party developers. Therefore, our study investigates the optimal integration decision of the Industrial Internet platform while considering its access price, the integration cost, and the net utility derived by enterprise customers from the third-party components.

We model a two-sided Industrial Internet platform that connects customers on the demand side to the developers on the supply side. We then explore the integration decision of the Industrial Internet platform and its important factors by solving the optimal profit function.

First, despite the high integration cost of third-party developers, the platform still chooses to integrate when enterprise customers derive high utility from the third-party components. Second, due to the compatibility effect, charging the enterprise customers a higher price may reduce the platform profits when these customers derive low utility from the third-party components. Third, the platform profits will increase along with the integration cost of third-party developers when it is low in the case where enterprise customers derive low utility from third-party components.

Our findings offer insightful takeaways for the Industrial Internet platform when making integration decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the inner mechanisms of the role of industrial internet platforms in empowering the digital transformation of SMEs. This ROOTCLOUD-based case study shows that knowledge integration and knowledge sharing and driving play essential empowering roles in the impact of industrial internet platforms on the digital transformation of SMEs. The industrial internet platform promotes knowledge integration on the supply side, empowers cross-domain knowledge sharing and shapes the knowledge-driven digital supply chain system in the digital transformation processes of SMEs.

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the knowledge empowerment role played by industrial internet platforms in the digital transformation process of SMEs. Based on theoretical sampling, this paper selects ROOTCLOUD as a typical case to analyse the implementation mechanism of the industrial internet platform in solving the digital transformation problems and challenges faced by SMEs.

Knowledge management (knowledge integration, sharing and driving) plays an important intermediary role between the empowerment of industrial internet platform and the digital transformation of SMEs. Specifically, the industrial internet platform empowers SMEs with knowledge, empowers supply-side knowledge integration, empowers cross-domain knowledge sharing and facilitates the formation of knowledge-driven supply chain systems.

This study clarifies the mechanism underlying the digital transformation of SMEs empowered by industrial internet platforms, that is, the empowerment of industrial internet platform enhances the level of knowledge integration and sharing of SMEs, thus improving the effectiveness of SMEs in achieving digital transformation. Further empirical studies should be conducted on the above mechanism.

Based on the theoretical perspective of knowledge management, this paper discusses the problems and challenges faced in the digital transformation of SMEs through knowledge empowerment by the industrial internet platform ROOTCLOUD and proposes that knowledge empowerment in the industrial internet platform helps supply-side knowledge integration, promotes cross-domain knowledge sharing and contributes to forming a knowledge-driven supply chain system, thereby promoting the digital transformation of SMEs. System architects and relevant policy departments should pay attention to data-centred system construction, improve the construction of data-based collaborative application ecology and encourage industrial internet platforms to provide more targeted knowledge empowerment solutions for SMEs.

This paper aims to clear whether the monopoly structure of the internet industry has produced market power and discussed the welfare change of the internet industry monopoly.

By using new empirical industrial organization methods and taking the e-commerce market as an example, the authors measured market power and economies of scale of the internet platform companies.

Internet platform enterprises have formed scale economy, but it has not had market power, and the industry still maintains high levels of competition; also, the emergence of large enterprises may increase the welfare of consumers.

The conclusion of this paper clarified actual competition status of internet industry and provided a new foothold for regulation and ideas for the traditional industry to crack the Marshall Conflict.

To better understand the role of industrial big data in promoting digital transformation, the authors propose a theoretical framework of industrial big-data-based affordance in the form of an illustrative metaphor – what the authors call the “organizational drivetrain.”

This study investigates the effective use of industrial big data in the process of digital transformation based on the technology affordance–actualization theoretical lens. A software platform and services provider with more than 4,000 industrial enterprise clients in China was selected as the case study object for analyzing the digital affordance and actualization driven by industrial big data.

Drawing on a revelatory case study, the authors identify three affordances of industrial big data in the organization, namely developing data-driven customized projects, provisioning equipment-data-driven life cycle services, establishing data-based trust and determining affordance actualization actions driven by technology and market. In addition, the authors reveal the underlying drivetrain mechanisms to advance industrial big data affordance and actualization: stabilizing, enriching and pioneering.

This study builds a drivetrain model on digital transformation by industrial big data affordance actualization. The authors also provide practical implications that can help practitioners to implement digital transformation effectively and extract value from their investment.

The digitization process has increased the pressure on large firms to transform. However, current frameworks on digital transformation are not well explaining what factors contribute to, or hinder, a firm's digital transformation. Innovation diffusion theories could complement existing frameworks, and for this reason, the purpose of this paper is to expand the existing body of knowledge on what contributes to, or hinders, an industrial firm's digital transformation by applying a validated framework based on innovation diffusion theories on two pioneer cases: General Electric and Siemens EHR/Health Services.

The framework used in this paper is based on several years' empirical studies and iterative literature reviews on innovation diffusion theories. Further, each use case is based on literature reviews and unique empirical data, collected by the authors of this paper as a result of taking active part of respective company's multi-years transformation.

Common drivers of, and clear inhibitors to the two firms' transformation, were identified. The innovation diffusion framework was found to work very well in identifying those factors.

The implications are that researchers better can analyze/explain a digital transformation of a firm, and business managers can better plan or improve their firms' transformation processes.

The theoretical contributions of this paper are two: first, complement existing frameworks with a validated framework for innovation diffusion; second, provide an extension of our body of knowledge on factors that contributes to, or hinders, industrial firm's digital transformation.

The advantages of blockchain technology are being widely discussed by academics, the business community and government, because blockchain can promote data sharing, optimise business processes, reduce operation costs, improve collaborative efficiency and build credible systems. The supply chain is becoming a key area for the application of blockchain technology. However, few studies have discussed the effect of such emerging technologies on the supply chain in depth. Therefore, this paper aims to analyse how blockchain empowers supply chain and promotes supply chain management.

Based on a review of relevant literature and blockchain applications in practice, this paper analyses the development and research status of blockchain technologies. In addition, considering the different operational processes within the supply chain, the authors discuss the opportunities and challenges of blockchain technologies, such as the transparency of supply, intelligent manufacturing, the security of logistics, the platformisation of sales and the ecology of governance.

The authors find that information sharing, information traceability and trust establishment are the key categories of research achievements and applications of supply chain management. The central issues for blockchain researchers are the authenticity of transaction data, the traceability of long supply chains and the establishment of trust for all participants.

From the practical and theoretical perspectives, this paper shows the development of blockchain technologies to clarify the challenges, opportunities and prospects. This paper elucidates and facilitates the development of emerging interdisciplinary research and the practice of supply chain.

This paper aims to answer the following two questions: What are the affecting factors of platform leadership? How do the business ecosystem and unique attributes of platform enterprises affect the formation of platform leadership?

Based on the niche theory, this study used the grounded theory research methods to explore the strategic behavior of platform enterprises, analyze the characteristics of platform leadership and systematically explore the influencing factors of platform leadership based on four internet platform enterprises and their business ecosystem.

The result shows that the acquisition of platform leadership is closely related to the platform enterprises’ Niche, where they are located in the business ecosystem. Platform enterprises play the roles of the founder, coordinator, leader and arranger in the ecosystem, and there are four affecting factors of platform leadership: architecture foundation, connection and coordination, innovation leading and integrated expansion. The architecture foundation consists of four factors: platform architecture, installation base, intellectual property and network coverage; the connection and coordination contain five factors: interactive collaboration, multilateral user connection, information matching, neutral arbitration and mutualism; the innovation leading is composed of four factors: research and development investment, common components, complementary innovation, cross-border search and standard-setting; the integrated expansion includes resource orchestration, modular design, data collaboration, supportive enabling and scenario application.

This research constructs a framework of platform leadership with the influencing factors.

The existing literature has been mainly focused on local problems but without an overall framework for studying the top-level planning of intelligent construction from a systematic perspective. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap.

This research adopts a deductive research approach.

This research proposes a reference architecture and related business scenario framework for intelligent construction based on the existing theory and industrial practice.

The main contribution of this research is to provide a useful reference to the Chinese government and industry for formulating digital transformation strategies, as well as suggests meaningful future research directions in the construction industry.

Blockchain is a technical solution integrating multiple technologies, with the potential to overcome the drawbacks of organizational governance. Given the emergence and prevalence of blockchain, its importance for organizational governance has progressively increased. Therefore, this study aims to analyze how blockchain restructure organizational governance.

This study presents a structured systematic literature review of blockchain-enabled applications across diverse organizational governance models and several case studies to illustrate them. Based on the above analysis, governance mechanisms, transaction upgrading and challenges are proposed.

Based on the literature review and typical applications, the authors summarize the advances in the research on the theoretical and practical applications of blockchain in organizational governance. We also identify the influence mechanisms of organizational governance and investigate transaction upgrading based on blockchain. Finally, the authors discuss three types of challenges (i.e. administrative, technical and environmental) to the relationship between blockchain and organizational governance. Along with the development of blockchain applications, the impact of blockchain on organizational governance has progressed in both theory and practice. Therefore, these findings will have significant implications for both academics and practitioners.

This paper makes three key theoretical contributions: we review the literature on the impact of blockchain on organizational governance and present typical cases to illustrate it; propose four governance mechanisms for the application of blockchain in organizational governance; and propose an innovating-and-matching-oriented model of transaction upgrading based on blockchain.

This paper aims to empirically explore the evolution of servitization and how platforms affect the transition between the stages of servitization.

The authors conducted an in-depth case study of a Chinese manufacturer (i.e. Haier) using a longitudinal design. Three rounds of data collection were conducted between 2014 and 2020. The authors carried out 50 semi-structured interviews and 11 workshops to collect data from senior and middle managers of Haier and its business partners.

The authors found that Haier’s servitization journey includes three stages (i.e. product-oriented solution, integrated solution and smart connected solutions) that evolve in the target of the services and the digital components of the solutions. Haier has also developed three types of platforms (i.e. service platform, supply chain platform and platform ecosystem) to support the implementation of servitization. The empirical evidence reveals that platforms can address the complexities that emerged when Haier implements the different stages of servitization as well as enable Haier to transition from one stage of servitization to the next.

This study enhances the current understanding of the evolution of servitization and the roles of digital technologies in the transition between the stages of servitization. It also provides empirical evidence regarding how the platform approach enables the development of servitization. By clarifying the interplay between servitization and platforms, this study provides guidelines for managers on how to develop platforms to both advance and benefit from servitization.