Guidepost: The Evolution of Research on Industry Platforms

Abstract

Industry platforms have become an increasingly popular topic. Scholars in fields ranging from economics and strategy to operations management, marketing, law, and computer science all are contributing to the growing body of research. Several previously separate streams in the strategy field seem to be converging around platform dynamics, business models, and ecosystems. The topic also has attracted considerable attention in the media at least in part because the most valuable companies and the first trillion-dollar businesses are built around industry platforms – Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet-Google, Amazon, Facebook, Tencent, and Alibaba. At the same time, dominant platforms have come under increasing scrutiny for their accumulation of market power as well as abuses or misuses of that power. What specifically are platform businesses and how did they become a focus of such broad and intense inquiry? What gaps remain in the research? These questions are the subject of this essay.