Amateurs Crowds & Professional Entrepreneurs as Platform Complementors

40 Pages Posted: 24 Apr 2018 Last revised: 23 Jun 2024

See all articles by Kevin Boudreau

Kevin Boudreau

Northeastern University; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Date Written: April 2018

Abstract

Platforms often have “crowds” of amateurs working on them as complementors, in other cases professional entrepreneurs—or both. What can a platform owner do to implement these outcomes? I document evidence on mobile app developers showing that just small, incremental changes in platform design—related to the bare minimum costs required to build an app and factors affecting non-pecuniary payoffs—can lead the “bottom-to-fall-out” of the market to amateurs. Where the bottom-falls-out, there is a flood of lowest-quality developers who nonetheless are long-lived on the platform and engage in relatively high development activity. I find no evidence that amateurs crowd-out development activity of top developers in this context. Moreover, the bottom-falling-out is associated with the generation of significantly greater numbers of highest-quality products. I discuss several interpretations.

Suggested Citation

Boudreau, Kevin, Amateurs Crowds & Professional Entrepreneurs as Platform Complementors (April 2018). NBER Working Paper No. w24512, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3163279

Kevin Boudreau (Contact Author)

Northeastern University ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://www.kevinboudreau.com

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

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