Talking about Platforms

The discussion begins with positive network externalities, which are broken down into three key factors: accumulation, variety, and utility. Accumulation describes how interconnected items on a platform, such as Wikipedia articles, create value. Variety refers to the value generated by diverse complements, exemplified by apps in an app store. Utility represents the immediate value a platform offer...

Baldwin and Clark's "Design Rules, Volume 1" explores how modular design transforms technological innovation. The book reveals how breaking complex systems into independent, interconnected components enables faster, more flexible technological development. By analyzing design architectures, the authors demonstrate how modularity reduces complexity, accelerates innovation, and provides strategic ad...

This podcast episode features Wim Vanhaverbeke, a digital strategy and open innovation expert, discussing digital platforms and their impact on open innovation. Vanhaverbeke explains his perspective on platforms as business models facilitating interactions, highlighting the complexities of multi-sided B2B platforms compared to two-sided models. He details how digitalization and AI enhance open inn...

Join us as we analyze the complex dynamics of markets shaped by network effects. We'll investigate how compatibility decisions and sponsorship influence technology adoption and how the presence of two-sided platforms creates unique challenges and opportunities. To shed light on these critical market forces, we draw from the work of Katz and Shapiro (1985, 1986) and Rochet and Tirole (2003).

This conversation with Andrei Hagiu explores the power dynamics between platforms and participants, highlighting platform traps where dominant platforms can exert control over sellers. The discussion also considers the potential of blockchain technology to decentralize platforms and create more equitable business models.

In The Interaction Field, management expert and professor Erich Joachimsthaler explains that the only way to thrive in this environment is through the Interaction Field model. Companies who embrace this model generate, facilitate, and benefit from data exchanges among multiple people and groups -- from customers and stakeholders, but also from those you wouldn't expect to be in the mix, like suppl...

Platform cooperatives reimagine a world where domestic workers can double their income by establishing their platform. On this internet, platforms such as Twitch, Twitter, and Roblox are owned by their streamers, users, and creators. What if small fishing communities in Mexico or farmers in Kerala had the power to determine what data they collected about their work and how they utilized that data?...

"Ecosystems represent potentially the best organizational model for the future of organizations." Mark Greeven

Enterprise information systems (EIS) have been important enablers of business cross-functional processes since the 1990s. Often referred to as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, they were extended in line with electronic businesses for integration with suppliers and customers. Today, EIS architectures comprise, not only, ERP, supply chain, and customer relationship management systems, but...

The CityScienceLab at the HafenCity University Hamburg investigates the urban challenges in the era of digitalization in cooperation with partners from civil society, politics, economy, and science. It pursues an inter and transdisciplinary perspective by linking technical issues with social and cultural developments.

We explore the intersection of platform governance and media policy and examine the impact of inter-and-intra-organizational behavior on platform governance and content moderation.

We talk about the so-called “Web3” movement that emerges as a reaction against the growing concentration of power to information in the hands of a few and instead proposes an open, trustless, and distributed iteration of the Internet that rests on visions of interoperation, decentralization, democratization, and user-controlled monetization.

A conversation about the legal challenges and opportunities of blockchain technology and platform ecosystems, with a specific focus on governance and trust.

Building identity, payments, and data exchange as infrastructure to scale solutions in agriculture, health, poverty, climate, and other pressing challenges promises to be one of the most compelling public interventions of this decade. But the work, as with the definition of it, is still emergent. We look forward to hearing from you to learn more ways to think about these important issues.

In most platform environments, the exclusive provision of premium content from leading creators (superstars) is used as a strategy to boost user participation and secure a competitive edge vis-à-vis rivals. In this article, we study the impact of superstar exclusive content provision on platform competition and complementors’ homing decisions. Two competing platforms facilitate interactions betwee...

The burgeoning digital platforms literature across multiple business disciplines has primarily characterized the platform as a market or network. Although the organizing role of platform owners is well recognized, the literature lacks a coherent approach to understanding organizational governance in the platform context. Drawing on classic organizational governance theories, this paper views digit...

Many recent technological advances (e.g. ChatGPT and search engines) are possible only because of massive amounts of user-generated data produced through user interactions with computing systems or scraped from the web (e.g. behavior logs, user-generated content, and artwork). However, data producers have little say in what data is captured, how it is used, or who it benefits. Organizations with t...

Research summary Platform ecosystems have spurred new products and services, sparked innovation, and improved economic efficiency in various industries and technology sectors. A distinctive feature of the platform architecture is its modular and interdependent system of core and complementary components bound together by design rules and an overarching value proposition. Accordingly, we conceptual...

Enterprise resource planning upgrades can be expensive and complex—and unavoidable. A product and platform approach can manage costs and improve outcomes.

Daniel, Tommaso, and Philip talk about the upcoming season, important changes to the team (welcome, Tommaso!), and Platform Thinking.

We end season two of the Talking about Platforms Podcast by bringing on a true expert on applied network effects. Sameer Singh looks back on a long and successful track record investing in network effects-based startups. In this episode, we discuss how Sameer differentiates between networked products and platforms, how to measure network effects, and why network effects-based businesses must also...

Why do we need platform business design? Today's rise of digital platforms is reshaping our economy leaving traditional business models far behind. Google, Airbnb, Facebook, Uber, and Amazon are only a few prominent examples of an unstoppable row of businesses leveraging platform dynamics. A multi-sided platform acts as a digital marketplace, where producers and consumers come together, and value...

Abstract of the paper we discuss We investigate patterns in platform ecosystem emergence. We find that the processes of ecosystem emergence—value discovery (designing and establishing an ecosystem value proposition and individual value offerings), collective governance (regulation of participation), platform resourcing (resource acquisition for set-up and scale-up), and contextual embedding (legit...

Abstract Digital platforms are an omnipresent phenomenon that challenges incumbents by changing how we consume and provide digital products and services. Whereas traditional firms create value within the boundaries of a company or a supply chain, digital platforms utilize an ecosystem of autonomous agents to co-create value. Scholars from various disciplines, such as economics, technology manageme...