Control as a strategy for the development of generativity in business models for mobile platforms

The objective of this paper is to put forward a discussion of how a better understanding of the issues surrounding control can be an important element in the development of generativity strategies in business models for mobile platforms, such as Apple´s iPhone. Generativity refers to “a technology´s overall capacity to produce unprompted change driven by large, varied, and uncoordinated audiences” [29]. In this paper generativity is defined as the ability of a self-contained system to create, generate, or produce new content, structure, or behaviour without additional help or input from the original creators [23]. Although generativity is at the core of Apple´s expansion model, the company has to keep a tight control on the innovation platforms in order to protect their revenue sources, whilst at the same time ensuring that this does not stifle third party development and the innovation of compelling services. This is part achieved by the controlling access to the platform through the App Store for all actors of the platform ecosystem. It is possible to analyse the relationships between Apple and the other actors of the Apple Mobile Platform and identify through a longitudinal analysis of control the formation of strategies that balance or shift the control between actors, which gives further insight on possible sources of revenue based on the value network defined for such control points.