Digital technology is increasingly integrated in industrial applications and alters existing system architectures and innovation processes. This paper explores platform and application strategies based on an empirical case study of avionics at the Swedish firm Saab Aeronautics. The paper complements perspectives on digital innovation in relation to open source software development and systems such as mobile operating systems with applications, and points at limitations of organizational metaphors as bazaars and cathedrals. The results recognize that there is more to a city than a bazaar and a cathedral and show that the development toward digitalization necessitate industrial firms to consider safety-critical and security aspects while allowing for generativity based on recombination through system partitioning enabling different control and generativity priorities for different parts of the system.