The Evolution of Innovation Across Web 2.0 Platforms Through Mutation, Natural Selection, and Reuse

Abstract

This paper examines the question of how innovations diffuse across web 2.0 business designs and affect change at the industry level. We apply evolutionary theory as a theoretical lens and conceptualize the adoption and diffusion of innovations as a dynamic process where innovations propagate vertically within firms via successive product releases as well as horizontally across firms via imitation and replication. We develop a formal stochastic process model that allows us to design a multi-level study that examines which innovations survive in the market and which do not and if and under what conditions industry standardization is achieved.