Midway Seminar: National Markets in a World of Global Platform Giants

Welcome to Alina Kontareva's PhD Midway Seminar: National Markets in a World of Global Platform Giants

Abstract

Online digital platforms are a new type of organization; they are data-driven, software-based companies that were first established in the late 90s as the result of increased digitization and the extensive adoption of the Internet for economic and social activities. In 2020, the most successful Internet companies have built complex ecosystems for attracting users, data providers, and many other actors. These ecosystems are designed to control a value chain, which consists of an ecosystem of complementors that are connected through the platform. Because online platforms are new organizational forms, this poses new theoretical and methodological challenges regarding how to understand the competition between platform ecosystems, between complementors in a single ecosystem, and the competition between the platform and its complementors. Benefiting from enormous scale, network effects, and winner-take-all markets, the global platform giants have dominant positions in many countries. U.S. Internet platforms currently dominate the world ex-China and a few other national markets. This dominance extends to operating systems (Android, iOS) and online digital platforms (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix). The global dominance of U.S. West Coast platforms has been remarked upon in the press and, more recently, in academic writings. Not surprisingly, most platform theorizing is based on the cases of Western companies. Interestingly, there are national markets where platform companies have emerged in the local context and are able to compete successfully against the global giants in the domestic markets. This Ph.D. project aims to expand our understating of the operation and strategies of platforms within different geographies by study the Russian platform firms. Russian platforms have emerged and proven capable of competing in the domestic market, while also developing complex technological architectures, and integrating digital data into their business models.

 

Thesis supervisors:

  • Martin Kenney (UC Davis)
  • Fulvio Castellacci (TIK, UiO)

Commentators:

  • Koen Frenken (Utrecht University)
  • Miria Grisot (Department of Informatics, UiO)

 

The seminar is open to everyone, and the manuscript is available upon request.

 

Welcome!

Publisert 29. jan. 2020 13:37 - Sist endret 29. jan. 2020 13:37