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The role of complementary products is becoming increasingly important in facilitating innovation and has become a pivotal aspect of an organisation’s technology strategy. To address the lack of a useful framework that captures the different dimensions of product complementarity, this paper proposes a categorization for complementary products centered on user engagement. Based on a sample of 305 make, buy, and ally decisions for 32 primary product firms in the Personal Computing industry, this paper explores the influence of the proposed categorization on its strategy decision for developing complementary products. Results suggest a nuanced categorization of product complementarity adds value to explaining the decision, with the firm’s knowledge capital having a non-trivial influence on it. This paper endeavors to contribute to the literature on platform innovation by examining significance of inter-product relationships on strategy.

This chapter provides a much-needed summary on the general introduction of product architecture and quasi-open product architecture by Chinese carmakers. After noting that Geely’s first-stage development was mainly based on reverse engineering, this chapter investigates the complex process of changing platform strategy by Geely during the 2010s, i.e. Geely’s own platform upgrading (FE, KC, NL), and the co-development of new Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) platform with Volvo at the same time. The chapter illustrates Geely’s future ambition on the internalization of platform development capacity in B-segment Modular Architecture (BMA) and Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), and concludes with the hypothesis of future rationalization of platform strategy by the broader implementation of Volvo’s platforms in CMA, SEA, and Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) to Geely’s car brands when two entities further consolidate their assets in the coming years.