What is it about?

The industrial internet of things (IIoT) has created global-scale competitive and collaborative dynamics between technology firms that supply digital infrastructures, services, and platforms for the industry. The present paper analyses the strategies of established German firms that have provided IIoT technologies in the domain of ‘smart manufacturing.’ We investigate the firms’ evolving positions within the multi-layered technology stack of IIoT and explore their technological dependency on global cloud-infrastructure suppliers. Second, we put the firm strategies into the context of the recent German industrial-policy initiatives related to the discourse of ‘digital sovereignty.’

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Why is it important?

Empirically, we explore the emerging global-scale division of labor between US-American cloud-infrastructure suppliers and the German providers of higher-layer IIoT technologies. Conceptually, this study offers the framework of global technological ecosystems as a new perspective on the transnational platform economy, which highlights the enabling character of global-scale digital infrastructures and acknowledges active involvement of non-firm actors in ecosystem governance.

Perspectives

I hope our paper will enrich the debate about the so-called "platform economy" by throwing some light on the globalized character of the digital infrastructures and technology-supply relations that enable the provision of platform-based digital services. While the present study focuses on the case of industrial platforms, our observations may be relevant also for the research on other digital platform sectors.

Grzegorz Lechowski
WZB Berlin Social Science Center

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This page is a summary of: Emerging positions of German firms in the industrial internet of things: A global technological ecosystem perspective, Global Networks, June 2022, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/glob.12380.
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