  Industrial manufacturers increasingly develop digital platforms in the
business-to-business (B2B) context. This emergent form of digital platforms
requires a profound yet little understood holistic perspective that encompasses
the co-evolution of platform architecture, platform services, and platform
governance. To address this research gap, our study examines multiple platform
sponsors from an industrial manufacturing context. The study demarcates three
platform archetypes: product platform, supply chain platform, and platform
ecosystem. We argue that each platform archetype involves a gradual development
of platform architecture, platform services, and platform governance, which
mirror each other. We also find that each platform archetype is characterized
by a specific innovation mechanism that contributes to the platform service
discovery and expands the platform value. Our study extends the co-evolution
perspective of platform ecosystem literature and digital servitization
literature.
