Open Access

Wolfgang Buchholz, Holger De Bie

• In the so-called ecosystem economy, new platform-based business models evolve rapidly based on the prospects of digital technology. Thus far, little research has been conducted on the supply side of digital platforms which also explains the lack of empirical evidence. We develop a framework, categorise complementors, and analyse the main factors of influence for the evaluation and selection of complementors. For our analysis, we consider both industrial IoT platforms as well as financial services platforms. In addition, we use an explorative research design and conduct semi-structured interviews to contribute to this research field. Top-level managers of digi-tal platforms in both industries were interviewed as experts. In addition, the study also considered secondary data to increases the overall reliability and validity in terms of triangulation. As a result, our study reveals both a number of similarities and differences with regard to complementor management for industrial IoT- and financial services platforms.