Platforms and their Societal Impact. A Force for Good?

Platform businesses connect at least two sides, e.g. a buyer and a seller of a good or service, and have grown tremendously in importance in recent years. Indeed, platform business models form the basis of many household names in social media, ridesharing, operating systems and many more. The organization of such platforms is especially interesting because much of the value of a platform is created by complementary actors (individuals or firms) outside of the control of the platform business. This creates interesting dynamics between platform and complementors and between different platforms competing for the best complementors