Platforms

Platforms, or technology-enabled business marketplaces, are transforming the way we think about business. For 200 years, business had been about creating large scale in various aspects and connecting them in a linear fashion: raw materials, parts and components, resources of production and transformation, distribution, etc., and using this large-scale structure to efficiently create and supply something of value to the customer. Today's platform technologies change this in a fundamental way: business and customer value is created by enabling others to create and provide value - with the platform coordinating and providing services (such as discovery, matching, fulfillment, financial payments, trust etc.) to facilitate participants' work. While a typical traditional business might work with hundreds of thoroughly vetted business partners under bespoke contracts, platforms typically feature a dynamic ecosystem with thousands or millions of partners enabled with information technologies that support lightweight automated contracts. This new business model raises plenty of exciting research questions, covering business strategy and governance and policy making, some of which I have worked on and are discussed below. 

General Presentations and Articles