Ecosystem simulation: the software to platform leap

Abstract

Abstract The transition from a software provider to a platform organizer is a pivotal transformation in the industrial software ecosystem (ISECO), enabling firms to fully leverage ecosystem dynamics, drive innovation, and achieve sustainable competitive advantages. Despite its growing significance, the strategic mechanisms underlying this transition remain underexplored. This study addresses this gap by employing an evolutionary game-theoretic approach to model the interplay among the government, the platform organizer, and the user in shaping ISECO’s trajectory across initial, mature, and ideal developmental stages. Through rigorous simulation analyses, we demonstrate that government subsidies and cost-sharing mechanisms significantly influence the evolutionary stability of the ecosystem. Furthermore, our findings reveal a critical threshold in cost-sharing strategies: a δ range of 0.2–0.4 that effectively incentivizes user adoption. When δ > 0.4, platform organizers may experience diminishing incentives to offer advanced services, potentially destabilizing the ISECO. This research advances the theoretical understanding of platform evolution by formalizing the dynamic, multi-agent interactions and threshold effects that drive this shift. It provides actionable insights for policymakers, software developers, and industrial strategists to design stage-specific subsidy withdrawal mechanisms and optimize cost-sharing structures without compromising profitability. The results underscore the necessity of dynamic, stage-specific interventions to facilitate a sustainable transition from software provision to platform organization.