Platform company

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A platform company offers a digital basis for the services of different individuals or organizations based on a uniform standard around a central core in contrast to a value chain of a conventional company. Important characteristics of a platform company are network effects and a high degree of digitization for the use of data to increase productivity compared to conventional companies. Fast scaling around a core is part of the business model.

In 2016, according to a study by the Center for Global Enterprise, there were 176 platform companies with a market value of more than one billion US dollars .

Types

Platform companies can be divided into three types. Firstly in transaction platforms that enable an exchange of services between individuals and organizations (also known under the term "multi-sided market"), secondly in innovation platforms , on which different individuals or organizations can offer services on the basis of an organization and in Integration platforms that combine both.

Companies of the "sharing economy", which enable the common use of objects, are seen as a subspecies of the transaction platforms.

List of platform companies

Controversy

Platform companies and the monopolies they strive for are partially praised, e.g. B. from Peter Thiel : “ Competition Is for Losers. If you want to create and capture lasting value, look to build a Monopoly "

They are also often criticized. Professor Lutz Becker speaks of a market fiction that the digital platforms generate. The platforms of the Internet giants are able to internalize certain economic and social agreements, rules and procedures, as well as their submission to their own business models ("take-over"), the rules of supply and demand, markets and industries, of culture and society, of work and capital, to change substantially and radically and thus to digitally colonize the market and, as a result, societies, namely at the latest when the platforms become a de facto prerequisite for participation in the market or society.

Regulatory measures

Due to the central performance promise of platform companies to offer services more productively in a dynamic way, they are disruptively attacking business models established in many countries. This creates public discussions about the legality of platform companies' services, as well as changes to regulation (as in the Uber and Airbnb cases in Berlin) or bans (Uber in Hamburg).

Individual evidence

  1. Pierre Daniel Bertholdt: New business models for long-distance passenger rail transport based on the platform concept . Ed .: Free University of Berlin. Berlin July 2018.
  2. Nick Srnicek: Platform Capitalism . Hamburger Edition, 2018, ISBN 978-3-86854-321-6 .
  3. ^ Peter C. Evans, Annabelle Gawer: The Rise of the Platform Enterprise - a Global Survey. (PDF) The Center for Global Enterprise, January 2016, accessed on January 22, 2019 .
  4. ^ Geoffrey P. Parker, Marshall W. van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary: Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming and How to Make Them Work for You . Norton & Company, 2019, ISBN 978-0-393-35435-5 .
  5. Bitkom: German companies ignore platform economy. In: www.bitkom.org. February 9, 2017, accessed February 1, 2019 .
  6. ^ Peter Thiel: Competition Is for Losers. In: The Wall Street Journal. September 12, 2014, accessed February 1, 2019 .
  7. ^ Lutz Becker: Creative destruction and the change of entrepreneurship: On the topicality of Joseph Schumpeter . Ed .: Hans Frambach, Norbert Koubek, Heinz D. Kurz, Reinhard Pfriem. 1st edition. Metropolis Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-7316-1358-9 , pp. 500 .
  8. ^ Theresa Dräbing: Uber against taxi street fight in Berlin. In: Berliner Zeitung. January 20, 2019, accessed January 22, 2019 .
  9. ^ Sonja Stössel: How Airbnb became a supplicant in Berlin. In: Welt Online. August 8, 2018, accessed January 22, 2019 .