Beyond connecting platform participants, industrial digital platforms serve as incubators for diverse business portfolios tailored to address industry-specific challenges. Yet, their development is often hindered by the absence or ineffectiveness of institutions, commonly referred to as institutional voids. While prior research has emphasized data as a strategic asset that empowers platform transformation and drives novel value propositions, the mechanisms through how data assets are formed, and their value creation remain ambiguous. Through a longitudinal case study, this research explores how a digital industry platform rooted in the ceramic industry leverages accumulated data resources to develop data assets that fill in institutional voids. Using the bricolage lens, we identify the platform’s adoption of data-based bricolage process—institutional, platform, and anchor bricolage approaches—to construct digital infrastructure, enrich digital resources, and create data asset products. This process also marks the platform’s evolution from a trading intermediary to an institutional intermediary. This study contributes to the understanding of how digital platforms can leverage benign institutional voids to address industry voids. Additionally, it advances the literature on data asset formation by a bricolage lens, which can drive institutional change rather than only serving as a ‘second-best’ solution. These findings offer valuable practical insights for the evolution of nascent digital platforms.
