From Drifting Information Infrastructure to Architected Platform: A Path Constitution Perspective

As digitalization accelerates, traditional companies are following the lead of digital natives and turning towards platform strategies to develop digital value propositions at fast pace. This paper reports on the digitalization journey of the LEGO Group to elaborate how brick- and-mortar companies can break away from a drifting information infrastructure and trigger its transformation into a digital platform. Conceptualizing information infrastructure evolution as a path- dependent process, the case study explores how mindful deviations by architects guide installed base cultivation through collective action and trigger the creation of a new ‘platformization’ path. Addition-ally, the findings portrait architecting as a process of socio-technical path constitution that is equally shaped by deliberate human interventions and emergent forces through path-dependencies.