Abstract: Building a platform for enterprises is becoming an important means of digital transformation. Technology management researchers define a digital platform as a software-based platform, that is, an extensible code module that provides core functions and services. The digital platform owner and many external developers and end users using the digital platform jointly form the digital platform ecosystem. As the ecosystem leader, the digital platform owner is responsible for promoting the growth of the digital platform ecosystem. It is necessary to encourage developers' innovation on the basis of complementary relationship with developers, so as to optimize users' platform experience and improve the platform value. In the digital platform ecosystem, there is no traditional hierarchical authority relationship between the digital platform owner and the developer. The developer has residual control and residual claim with greater autonomy. So, how can digital platform owners encourage developers to innovate when the original level consciousness and the level concept are weakened?
At present, the existing researches mainly focus on the digital platform architecture and digital platform governance. The research shows that the digital platform features, product space, platform iteration frequency, openness selection and governance measures have been studied to promote the innovation of developers. However, the following two aspects still need to be further discussed: First, the digital platform iteration has both frequency and quantity dimensions, that is, the number of modules released to developers in each digital platform iteration (the number of digital platform modules) , but there are few studies on the relationship between the number of digital platform modules and the innovation of developers; Second, existing studies have focused on the innovation effect of developers, such as products' quality, performance, speed, etc., but for the growth of the entire ecosystem, the developer update, as a special form of innovation, is equally important. Existing studies have rarely discussed the influencing factors of the developer update.
Based on the existing digital platform research, this paper uses the open innovation theory for reference, and applies the data of Firefox 2017—2019 to discuss whether the number of modules provided by the digital platform to developers through iteration will affect the developer updates. At the same time, combined with the unique environment of developers in the digital platform ecosystem, this paper analyzes the regulatory role of thedeveloper competition and reputation, and uses the data of Firefox 2017—2019 to testit. The results show that the increase in the number of digital platform module resources is conducive to the updating of developers, and is negatively regulated by the competition of the same kind and positively regulated by the reputation of developers. Further research shows that the increase in the number of digital platform module resources is not conducive to the improvement of developers' update speed, and is negatively regulated by similar competition and positively regulated by developers' reputation. From the perspective of thedigital platform iteration, this paper explores the relationship between the number of digital platform module resources and the decision-making of developers' update. Possible contributions include the following: (1) Previous platform researchregards the trading platform as the main platform, ignoring the study on the software platform which is very important for the digital transformation. This paper further enriches the research on digital platform owners' promotion of developers' innovation at the micro level; (2) Combined with the environment of developers, this paper studies the impact of the competition and the reputation of similar developers on the number of digital platform modules and the collaborative relationship between developers' updates, and further expands the research on the mechanism of digital platform owners to promote developers' innovation. Through the above research, this paper opens the “black box” of the relationship between the digital platform and developers, which has reference significance for discussing the collaborative evolution mechanism of the digital platform ecosystem, and provides reference for the governance of the digital platform ecosystem.

Key words: Digital Platform Ecosystem, Internal Competition, Reputation Mechanism, Iterative Innovation

摘要： 在数字经济时代,数字平台成为社会生产、分配、交换与消费活动的重要载体。本文从数字平台迭代视角,探索数字平台模块数量与开发者更新之间的关系。结果表明:数字平台模块数量增加有利于开发者更新,且受到同类竞争的负向调节与开发者声誉的正向调节。进一步研究发现,数字平台模块数量增加不利于开发者更新速度的提高,这一关系也受到同类竞争的负向调节与开发者声誉的正向调节。本研究进一步打开了数字平台与开发者之间关系的“黑箱”,对探讨数字平台生态系统协同演化机制具有参考意义,为数字平台生态系统管理提供了借鉴。

关键词: 数字平台生态系统, 内部竞争, 声誉机制, 迭代创新