Exploring generativity and growth in digital platform ecosystems under resource constraints

Digital transaction platforms have become the prevailing organizational form in the digital economy. Yet, many struggle to sustain generativity and growth under resource constraints. Prior research largely assumes that generativity depends on continuous centralized efforts from the platform owner, leaving unclear how platforms can sustain generativity when such support declines. Using izi.TRAVEL as a revelatory case, we examine how platform generativity and growth are sustained despite severe resource constraints. Adopting a process perspective, we develop a model that explains this trajectory through the interplay of three mechanisms. Centralized generativity orchestration mechanism stimulates participation and builds accumulated capability among ecosystem actors. The triggering inflection mechanism emerges when resource constraints activate the accumulated capability, reallocating generative agency and enabling the shift from centralized to more decentralized efforts towards generativity. The decentralized generativity orchestration mechanism makes it possible to sustain generativity in the ecosystem through decentralized efforts of independent ecosystem actors. These three mechanisms explain how generativity persists and platform growth continues despite limited centralized support. We contribute to generativity theory by reconceptualizing generativity as a distributed and dynamically reconfigured property of the ecosystem. In particular, we show how resource constraints (i.e. an exogenous influence) by activating accumulated capability (i.e. an endogenous influence), can sustain generativity instead of inhibiting it.