Ashish Mehra
Title: THE CONDITIONS, METHODS AND MECHANISMS FOR RAPID EVOLUTION OF DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE PLATFORMS: THE CASE OF THE DIGIT PLATFORM
Supervisor: Dr. Veiko Lember
Opponent: Colin van Noordt, MSc
Defense: 2-3 June 2022
Abstract: Digital infrastructure platforms are increasingly being designed and deployed to address a range of complex challenges at the intersection of society, organisations, environment, and governments. Existing literature provides powerful insights into the inner workings of these systems and the capabilities and mechanisms that lead to their evolution. However, little attention has been given to the challenges of addressing complexity that organisations and managers of these systems are faced with and the conditions that impact the evolution of these platforms. Hence, this paper adopts a complexity lens for understanding digital infrastructure platforms and what causes their rapid evolution. It follows a case study method where it studies the DIGIT platform through participatory immersion, interviews with managers of the platform and through review of platform-related literature. This paper contributes to the literature on digital infrastructure platforms by proposing a conceptual framework that factors in the conditions, methods and mechanisms that lead to rapid evolution of digital infrastructure platforms. The framework this paper proposes looks at three aspects. First, it identifies the contextual conditions that have an impact on evolution outcomes. Second, it identifies the methods used for addressing complexity faced by organisations and managers in platform evolution. Third, it maps the evolution of the platform to three generative mechanisms of innovation, adoption, and scaling.
Keywords: Digital infrastructure platforms, digital transformation, platform evolution, emergence, generative mechanisms, complex systems, complexity theory, adoption, innovation, scaling, case study
