Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Databases and Information Systems Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Databases and Information Systems

How Apis Create Growth By Inverting The Firm, Seth G. Benzell, Jonathan Hersh, Marshall Van Alstyne Mar 2022

How Apis Create Growth By Inverting The Firm, Seth G. Benzell, Jonathan Hersh, Marshall Van Alstyne

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Traditional asset management strategy has emphasized building barriers to entry or closely guarding unique assets to maintain a firm’s comparative advantage. A new “Inverted Firm” paradigm, however, has emerged. Under this strategy, firms share data seeking to become platforms by opening digital services to third-parties and capturing part of their external surplus. This contrasts with a “pipeline” strategy where the firm itself creates value. This paper quantitatively estimates the effect of adopting an inverted firm strategy through the lens of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), a key enabling technology. Using both public data and that of a private API development firm, …


Identifying Social Influence In Networks Using Randomized Experiments, Sinan Aral, Dylan Walker Oct 2011

Identifying Social Influence In Networks Using Randomized Experiments, Sinan Aral, Dylan Walker

Business Faculty Articles and Research

The recent availability of massive amounts of networked data generated by email, instant messaging, mobile phone communications, micro blogs, and online social networks is enabling studies of population-level human interaction on scales orders of magnitude greater than what was previously possible.1'2 One important goal of applying statistical inference techniques to large networked datasets is to understand how behavioral contagions spread in human social networks. More precisely, understanding how people influence or are influenced by their peers can help us understand the ebb and flow of market trends, product adoption and diffusion, the spread of health behaviors such as smoking and …