That principle explains why platforms are both a popular business model and a
highly successful organization design for business ecosystems (Gawer and Cusumano,
2002). A platform architecture divides the components of the technical system into two
groups: the platform, which is core and provided by its owner, and optional components,
which are provided by external complementors (Baldwin and Woodard, 2011). As a
purely technical matter, most platforms can be subdivided into constituent parts -- both
modules and rules -- but dividing the ownership of those core components is
economically disadvantageous.
8 Notably, the most famous split-core system -- the
Windows-Intel platform for IBM PCs -- came about not by design but through a series of
mishaps and miscalculations (described in detail by Ferguson and Morris, 1993).