Architectural Learning in the Professional 3D Printing Ecosystem: Proxies and the Complementarity Space

To realize complementary value in ecosystems, organizations engage in architectural learning, which involves searching for interdependencies and specifying interactions with external complements. In this article, we explore how this process differs when potential complements are not yet fully interoperable and complementarity is emergent. We report on a longitudinal case study of a 3D printer company that shifted from producing inexpensive personal desktop 3D printers to the professional 3D printing ecosystem. The company intensively used proxies (stand-in components) to support learning about interdependencies with potential external complements. This process informed internal component adaptations and the design of boundary resources that enabled third-party complementors to make their components fully complementary. From this case, we theorize this process in terms of shaping a complementarity space: a problem space in which organizations iteratively draw on proxies to provide resources such as interfaces and tools to transfer complementary capabilities to other organizations. We discuss theoretical implications for research on architectural learning and ecosystems.