Building the Business Platform by Modularization Strategies: Cases of Taiwan Social Networking Vendors

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is a very interesting paper well written and results are clearly explained. I would suggest that more information about the research method and data should be added. How did you get access to the information?. How do we know that the two cases were not just opportunistic behavior of the companies? Does there exit and explicit description of the modules with interfaces etc.

Again congratulation on a fantastic paper

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

 

 

 

Point 1: It is a very interesting paper well written and results are clearly explained. I would suggest that more information about the research method and data should be added. How did you get access to the information?. How do we know that the two cases were not just opportunistic behavior of the companies? Does there exit and explicit description of the modules with interfaces etc.

 

Again congratulation on a fantastic paper 


 

Response 1:

The research method and data collection had been articulated on the page 5, line 242~249, and emphasized the method of content analysis based on 8 modular operators and the associated modular characteristics.

The research data were mainly retrieved from public news posted on the offical websites and  partially from interviewing with the engineers and managers of studying cases.

I believe that the public news posted on websites reveal the corporate strategic intents intrinsically, which should not demonstrate temporarily opportunistic behaviors. More importantly, the study cases both have been acquired by global companies, indicating their accumulative successes through continuously deliberate product strategies.

The modual interface designed for collaboration with partners is not explicit because of trade secrets. However,  the author was told that the strategic modular APIs have been specially articulated for cooperation when interviewing with the corporate respondents.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper potentially could be interesting for scientific community, because its discusses relevant topic. However, the content is very hard to understand and the structure does not follow scientific paper approach. Major changes have to be made before publishing in the journal.

The abstract and introduction have to be formulated properly, focusing on the scientific problem, subject, methods and the main outcomes. The theoretical part should introduce the main key words from the title. The empirical part for case studies have to present context, to introduce data collection methods and to present generalization of results. Discussion is related to the main insights form this research and opinion of other scientists.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

 

Point 1: The paper potentially could be interesting for scientific community, because its discusses relevant topic. However, the content is very hard to understand and the structure does not follow scientific paper approach. Major changes have to be made before publishing in the journal.

The abstract and introduction have to be formulated properly, focusing on the scientific problem, subject, methods and the main outcomes. The theoretical part should introduce the main key words from the title. The empirical part for case studies have to present context, to introduce data collection methods and to present generalization of results. Discussion is related to the main insights form this research and opinion of other scientists.

Response 1:

The author revised this paper by adding more than 10 research papers to enhance the  theoretical arguments. See page 2, line 63~76; page 3, line 118~135; page3- 4, line 150~158; page 4, line 183~187.

The data collection and research method has been articulated on the page 5, line 242~249.

This revised paper has been augmented with general conclusion at page 12, line 565~580, which discusses the insights to past related research.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf