Fostering Value Co-Creation in Incumbent Firms: The Case of Bosch’s IoT Ecosystem Landscape

The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) forces incumbent firms to reshape their organizational structures toward platform ecosystems. However, prior research lacks concrete insights about how incumbent firms can foster value co-creation to become ecosystem orchestrators. In particular, it only sheds little light on the complex challenges incumbents face in designing and governing IoT platform ecosystems. In response, we present a single case study describing how the departments of Robert Bosch GmbH, a leading IoT company, overcame these challenges in three dimensions IoT ecosystem, IoT platform, and value co-creation. We tie in our research with the existing body of literature, identify four prevailing tensions in ecosystem establishment, and provide actionable design and governance recommendations to resolve them.