Cross-Category Innovation Strategy and Evolution of Digital Platform Ecosystems: A Technology-Driven Perspective
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
2.1. Cross-Category Innovation Under Categorization Theory
2.2. Cross-Category Innovation Driven by Digital Technology
2.3. Cross-Category Innovation in the Digital Platform Ecosystem
2.4. Research Framework
3. Study Design
3.1. Research Method
3.2. Case Selection
3.3. Data Collection
3.4. Data Analysis
4. Case Analysis and Findings
4.1. Category Emergence Stage: Technology Empowers Core Business
4.1.1. Digital Technology Emerges
4.1.2. Cross-Category Innovation Strategy
- (1)
- Identity strategy
- (2)
- Legitimacy strategy
- (3)
- Uniqueness strategy
4.1.3. A Digital Platform Ecosystem Based on Core Business
4.2. Category Spanning Stage: Continuous Innovation Strengthens Platform Value
4.2.1. Cross-Category Application of Digital Technology
4.2.2. Cross-Category Innovation Strategy
- (1)
- Platform envelopment strategy
- (2)
- Open innovation strategy
- (3)
- Status strategy
4.2.3. A Digital Platform Ecosystem Based on Cross-Category Collaboration
5. Research Conclusions and Prospects
5.1. Research Conclusions
- (1)
- The driving role of digital technology in cross-category innovation strategies. Modern society is in a period of continuous transformation. During the period of category emergence, core technologies are the cornerstone of the development of the digital platform ecosystem. Technology-driven development is manifested in the modular encapsulation of core technologies and the reconstruction of user cognition. The core ecosystem is constructed through identity strategy, legitimacy strategy, and uniqueness strategy. Among them, Category cognition plays a key guiding role in cross-category innovation strategies. The platform’s acute insight into users’ cognitive rules is the prerequisite for identifying the direction of innovation. Through cross-category identity strategies and legitimacy strategies, it can break through users’ inherent cognitive boundaries and establish a unique platform positioning in the fierce market competition. With the diversification of user demands, the unique experiences created through cross-category innovation can better meet people’s diverse expectations. Digital platform enterprises make strategic decisions, lay out new businesses, and provide products with professional capabilities to ensure new categories meet market competition legitimacy and user experience uniqueness. During the category spanning stage, the platform envelopment strategy provides users with more convenient one-stop services. By enveloping different types of businesses to the core platform, it helps the core platform maintain its leading position. The dual-wheel drive of technology and business promotes the construction of an open platform architecture across categories. Through rapid iteration of products and technologies, and timely adjustment of R&D directions and business strategies, it is the direction to gain strategic advantages. Technology-driven cross-category innovation requires continuous investment in fundamental R&D, business model innovation, and user experience optimization, alongside the launch of new functions and products to cope with the rapidly changing competitive environment and continuously consolidate and expand market share.
- (2)
- The unique advantages of the cross-category innovation strategy in the digital platform ecosystem. In the process of cross-category innovation, digital platform enterprises will transfer the core advantages such as technical capabilities, data insights and user bases accumulated in specific fields to new categories, shape unique value propositions, avoid homogenized competition, and enable the platform to quickly establish technical barriers in cross-category business, achieving business and market expansion. When a digital platform has a massive user base, it will be able to attract more complementary enterprises and users to settle in, forming scale advantages and network effects, bringing more business opportunities to the digital platform, enabling it to achieve rapid development in cross-category businesses and enter the survival space of competitors. Meanwhile, enterprises need to maintain consistency between the core technical logic and the user value proposition while conducting adaptive innovations based on the characteristics of different types of businesses to ensure the coherence of the internal organizational structure and the external ecological relationship. Strategies that balance legitimacy and distinctiveness can avoid category rigidity or excessive innovation, thereby enhancing the sustainable development of digital platform ecosystems. High legitimacy helps establish clear category boundaries, promoting cognitive legitimacy and coordination among members. High distinctiveness, however, allows a category to stand out but may also incur value penalties due to over-uniqueness. The equilibrium between these two dimensions contributes to category persistence and represents a strategic balance between member identity and positioning within the classification system. For newly formed categories, strategies may include clarifying membership criteria or emphasizing their unique value. For established categories, adapting to external challenges and internal changes requires absorbing new members or repositioning their market roles, while continuously adjusting their consistency and distinctiveness. In the digital platform ecosystem, collaborative cooperation is an important foundation for achieving cross-category innovation. Digital platform enterprises establish close cooperative relationships with their complementary partners within the ecosystem. By integrating resources from all parties, they achieve complementary advantages and jointly promote the integration and innovation among different business categories. A successful ecosystem should make participants satisfied with their positions. Digital platform enterprises need to find a strategic balance between collaborative cooperation and competition and flexibly adjust their strategies according to their own market environment. They need to strengthen cooperation with complementary enterprises during the category creation stage to jointly explore the market; in the cross-category field, they should enhance one’s own innovation capabilities and move into a leading position through the goal of continuous innovation and the drive of technological depth and technological leverage.
- (3)
- The co-evolution mechanism of cross-category innovation strategies and evolution in the digital platform ecosystem. The cross-category innovation and evolution of the digital platform ecosystem present a two-way interactive co-evolution mechanism. The core is reflected in the dynamic coupling of technology-driven, strategic actions and the ecosystem, which jointly become an important force promoting the evolution and development of the digital platform ecosystem. The cross-category innovation strategy takes technology-driven as its underlying logic. Through the modular accumulation and cross-category reuse of core technologies, it provides continuous impetus for ecosystem evolution. On this basis, through strategic actions such as identity construction, platform enveloping, and open innovation, the boundaries of traditional industry classification are broken through, driving the transfer of user cognition and the reconstruction of market classification. These strategic actions promote the deep integration of digital resources and new category businesses and drive the ecosystem to gradually evolve from the initial information-oriented ecosystem to a cross-category ecosystem covering transaction-oriented and innovative types. Realize the cross-scenario spillover and value creation of technical capabilities. At the organizational structure level, the platform has evolved from a simple business architecture to a multi-level and multi-dimensional complex system. Different business segments achieve organic interaction through technical interfaces and data sharing. At the value system level, the linear value creation model of a single subject shifts to a networked value co-creation model involving multiple subjects. Platforms, complementary enterprises, developers, users, etc., achieve resource integration and value addition through cooperative interaction. This evolution not only expands the strategic space of the platform but also provides rich application scenarios and resource support for new cross-category innovations through scene integration and ecological collaboration. The co-evolution mechanism of the digital platform ecosystem is essentially the systematic synergy of technology, strategy, and ecosystem. The cross-category innovation strategy is not only the driving force for the evolution of the ecosystem but also acquires new development opportunities in the process of ecosystem upgrading, ultimately forming a sustainable innovation ecosystem. Enterprises need to seize the opportunity of ecological structure transformation driven by technology, build a multi-value co-creation system, continuously explore across categories to stimulate innovation vitality, and ensure strategic resilience with sustained competitive capabilities, achieving a leapfrog development from core business-based to cross-category collaborative ecosystems.
5.2. Management Significance
5.3. Research Limitations and Prospects
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Data Category | Data Source | Data Words | Coding |
---|---|---|---|
Secondary Data | Official and legally disclosed information, company annual reports, etc. | 80,000 | N |
Authoritative information such as official websites and official public accounts | 105,000 | G | |
Records of public interviews and speeches recognized by senior executives, etc. | 80,000 | R | |
Academic articles on CNKI, Web of Science, etc. | 150,000 | X | |
Direct Observation | Product function module usage | 10,100 | B |
Aggregate Dimensions | Second Order Categories | First Order Categories | Evidences |
---|---|---|---|
Digital technology-driven | Digital technology emerging | Algorithmic recommendation systems and user profiling technologies |
|
Cross-category innovation strategy | Identity strategy | All in the core business |
|
Respond to users’ cognitive rules and demands |
| ||
Legitimacy strategy | Cognitive legitimacy |
| |
Acquisition of legitimacy |
| ||
Uniqueness strategy | Immersive Experience |
| |
Lead the trend in market positioning |
| ||
Digital platform evolution of ecosystem | A digital platform ecosystem based on core business | Complement and integrate around core business ecosystem |
|
Value emergence |
|
Aggregate Dimensions | Second Order Categories | First Order Categories | Evidences |
---|---|---|---|
Digital technology-driven | Cross-category application of digital technology | Big middle platform and data reuse |
|
Multi-platform collaborative operation and business scenario optimization |
| ||
Cross-category innovation strategy | Platform envelopment strategy | Vertical cross-category envelopment |
|
Horizontal business envelopment |
| ||
Open innovation strategy | An open developer platform |
| |
Empowerment through opening up to the outside world |
| ||
Status strategy | Establish category dominance |
| |
Continuous innovation and adaptation to market demands |
| ||
Digital platform evolution of ecosystem | A digital platform ecosystem based on cross-category collaboration | Cross-category collaboration |
|
value co-creation |
|
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Sun, S.; Gu, B.; Tang, F. Cross-Category Innovation Strategy and Evolution of Digital Platform Ecosystems: A Technology-Driven Perspective. Sustainability 2025, 17, 5113. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17115113
Sun S, Gu B, Tang F. Cross-Category Innovation Strategy and Evolution of Digital Platform Ecosystems: A Technology-Driven Perspective. Sustainability. 2025; 17(11):5113. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17115113
Chicago/Turabian StyleSun, Shuo, Bing Gu, and Fangcheng Tang. 2025. "Cross-Category Innovation Strategy and Evolution of Digital Platform Ecosystems: A Technology-Driven Perspective" Sustainability 17, no. 11: 5113. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17115113
APA StyleSun, S., Gu, B., & Tang, F. (2025). Cross-Category Innovation Strategy and Evolution of Digital Platform Ecosystems: A Technology-Driven Perspective. Sustainability, 17(11), 5113. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17115113