Central to the evolution of a digital business platform is the organization's ability to balance exploration (renewal) and exploitation (refinement) simultaneously. Drawing on prior research including digital platforms, contradictory tensions, and organizational ambidexterity and our own experience investigating digital business platforms in organizations, this article provides insights into how executives can manage this evolution successfully. More specifically, we present a framework recognizing three pairs of organizational capabilities (i.e., identifying-nourishing, expanding-legitimating, and augmenting-embedding) that enable balancing renewal and refinement of the platform over time. We close by providing critical managerial practices that executives can use in anticipating, adjusting, and evaluating the evolution of a digital business platform over time, including its initiation, development, and growth.

The Harvest City case describes the implementation of a cloud- and IoT-based intelligent procurement system at a new convention complex in the U.S. Midwest. The decision to build a convention complex is a strategic initiative for this city and involves extensive use of information technology. The risk of implementation failure is high. Such failures are costly, highly visible, and affect multiple stakeholders. This case explores the challenges of large-scale, computer-based system implementation by examining the events, decisions, and actions taken to implement the intelligent procurement system at Harvest City. This case helps students to reflect on and discuss the challenges of implementing IT-enabled change initiatives, especially those that requires streamlined and integrated inter-organizational processes. The case discussion gives students insight into what factors influence the success and failure of IT projects.

David Liniger, cofounder of RE/MAX, LLC., wondered if his business was prepared to exploit the next wave of business opportunities in the real estate market. This industry had moved from one in which broker/owners controlled all of the consumers' access to information, to an industry in which the agents were empowered as independent contractors with a fee-based obligation to the brokers, to an industry in which the buyer and seller have direct access to and control of information. Could RE/MAX use the next wave of IT to support its agents while also reaching out to today's well-informed and tech-savvy home buyers and sellers? Would a shift towards direct consumer support jeopardize RE/MAX's franchise sales and agent recruitment and retention?

This case provides an overview of the entrepreneurial leadership taken by the government of India's Andhra Pradesh state in promoting the IT sector and using it to improve the status of the state's economic position in the early years of the third millennium.

The president of Ford Argentina has to decide on the e-business approach at this subsidiary of Ford Motor Co. The approach must take into consideration the ambitious global e-business transformation proposed by the parent company within the context of a major economic crisis suffered in Argentina.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Project failure in the information technology area is a costly problem, and troubled projects are not uncommon. Executives become so strongly wedded to a particular project, technology, or process that they persist in committing their companies, continuing to pour in more resources. Escalation of commitment to a failing course of action is particularly common in technologically sophisticated projects with a strong IT component. There is little research on de-escalation, or the process of breaking the cycle of escalating commitment to a failing course of action. Through de-escalation, managers may successfully turn around or sensibly abandon troubled projects. During the past eight years, the authors examined more than 40 cases of IT project escalation. The authors present a process framework for de-escalation. The framework reveals that de-escalation is a four-stage process: problem recognition, re-examination of the prior course of action, the search for an alternative course of action, and implementation of an exit strategy. To show its general applicability, the authors apply the framework to a well-documented case study of de-escalation: the London Stock Exchange's Taurus system. The authors offer a set of recommendations for disengaging from a failing course of action.

Describes the negotiations between the City of Denver officials, airlines, consulting companies, and BAE for the construction of a backup baggage system to enable the Denver International Airport (DIA) to open. When DIA finally opens in February 1995, 16 months behind schedule, it has three separate baggage-handling systems instead of a single state-of-the-art, integrated baggage-handling system.

Describes the events surrounding the construction of the BAE baggage-handling system at the Denver International Airport. It looks specifically at project management, including decisions regarding budget, scheduling, and the overall management structure. Also examines the airport's attempt to work with a great number of outside contractors, including BAE, and coordinate them into a productive whole, while under considerable political pressures. Approaches the project from the point of view of BAE's management, which struggles to fulfill its contract, work well with project management and other contractors, and deal with supply, scheduling, and engineering difficulties.

In January 1988, Colby Chandler, Kodak CEO, created the Corporate Information Systems (CIS) and appointed Katherine Hudson head. She at once became the first head of IT and first woman corporate vice president in the company. Throughout 1989, Hudson inaugurated a series of organizational initiatives that not only would dramatically change the IT function within Kodak, but would rock the industry. She outsourced data center operations, telecommunications services, and personal computer support to IBM, DEC, and Business Land, respectively. Case presents the complexities in managing information systems through partnerships.