Value Chain Creation through Digital Innovation: The Ebb and Flow of Communality and Connectivity in a Networked Interorganizational System

Communality and connectivity are types of public goods offered in online spaces. As theoretical concepts, they provide design insight for the creation and understanding of interorganizational collaboration tools in multisided networks and value chains. In this paper, we present an extension of communality and connectivity that enables an examination of how organizations create value with networked organization-to-organization (O2O) systems. We use the framework as a lens for a case study involving the historical development of an online technology and its organization (MarketMaker) over 16 years that reframed the backbone of the agricultural market in the U.S. From a supply chain to a network. MarketMaker successfully interwove consumers, farmers, universities, government agencies, and states based on its innovation to connect stakeholders in novel ways around information and communication. As a central system in reconfiguring the value chain, MarketMaker provided services to the food industry not previously enabled. A number of important lessons learned about effective use of communality and connectivity are discussed.