To tackle housing and health crises, and the long-standing inefficiencies of the construction sector, many governments have begun to promote modularization and digitally-enabled product platforms to deliver social and economic infrastructure. Construction firms have opportunities to take up modularization and digitally-enabled product platforms though this is challenging. Prior research has studied industrialized construction firm strategies; however, less attention has been paid to their strategies for the transition into modularization and digitally-enabled product platforms.
This thesis examines industrialized construction firms’ strategies for the transition to modularization and then digitally-enabled product platforms. Following a review of the related literatures, three research objectives were identified. These cover strategies for 1) transitioning into modularization; 2) starting using digitally-enabled product platforms; and 3) gaining value by managing stakeholders through these platforms. A multiple-case study of nine firms was used to address the overall research problem through these objectives. The following tasks were undertaken: First, an initial analysis of the first three case firms was studied, drawing on the competence-based view of the firm; second, the full data-set was analyzed to categorize how firms begin to use digitally-enabled product platforms, and third, the four lead users were analyzed in more detail to articulate how they gain value where platforms are relatively open.
Overall, this thesis contributes to the industrialized construction firm and modularization strategy literature by showing how firms transition into platform owners, and how these leading owners gain value as they may make the platform itself open...