We are delighted to invite papers and participation to our HICSS-59 minitrack on Managing Platforms & Ecosystems’. The minitrack marks the eleventh installation of successful exploration of platforms and ecosystems since HICSS-49 (see Russell et al. 2021).

Understanding modern-day competition and the survival of organizations oftentimes requires an ecosystem lens. This is because digital technologies have enabled new complementarities between actors within and across industries (e.g., Cusumano et al. 2019, Constantinides et al. 2018). The increasing platformization of firms and technologies has important implications in how companies create and capture value. In this new “digital first” economy (Baskerville et al. 2020), transaction and innovation platforms have become dominant forms of organization (Gawer 2021, de Reuver et al. 2018, van Dijck 2018). As scholars interested in platforms and ecosystems, we…

(1) face new phenomena,
providing insights from (2) new empirics,

that might (3) require new methods,
and (4) new theories.

In general, the minitrack seeks contributions that problematize or build on diverse theoretical backgrounds such as management science, information systems, computer science, decision science, system science, organizational design, policy making, and behavioural economics to continue the scholarly exploration of concepts, theories, models, and tools for managing platforms and ecosystems. We are open to a wide set of methodological approaches, including empirical research, case-based research, field studies, design science, behavioural decision-making experiments, and conceptual research. This year, we are also happy to provide a fast-track for selected papers to Electronic Markets.

In the following, we provide exemplary provocations for research at the intersections of platforms and ecosystems that provide first glances into the research of interest to this minitrack. 

Platforms & Ecosystems + Data, Analytics, and AI:

In the past decade(s), platform research has introduced important mechanisms for explaining platform emergence and growth, such as network externalities (e.g., Eisenmann et al. 2011; Karhu and Ritala, 2021), generativity (e.g., Furstenau et al., 2023), or legitimization (Taeuscher and Rothe, 2021). Beyond traditional views on the growth of users, complementors, and firm size, platform providers collect more and more data (Aaltonen et al. 2020) to produce superior machine learning and AI applications. At the same time, ML and AI applications produce new data to provide growth of platforms (Gregory et al. 2021). Large language model platforms such as (Chat)GPT indicate a shift from producing value through matching complementors and users to learning how to produce content and services from data over time. Data has become a vital resource and decentralized infrastructures such as the emerging data spaces (Beverungen et al. 2022, Otto and Jarke 2019) might challenge current forms of organizing ecosystems via polycentric platforms (Pujadas et al. 2024) where data and rights to use data are shared under new terms. 

Platforms & Ecosystems + Global Grand Challenges:

As we reached the halftime mark of UN Agenda 2030, demand and supply sides are increasingly concerned about their impact on the 17 sustainable development goals. None of these challenges can be solved by single actors (Waddock et al., 2015). Instead, they involve many actors across organizations and beyond the reach of regular organizational control (Kokshagina, 2022). Thus, platform ecosystems are considered tools to address grand challenges (Nambisan & George, 2024; Ritala, 2024) and societal challenges (Addo, 2022). At this point, however, despite exceptions focusing on platforms and development (Bonina et al., 2021), platform theorizing has mostly been concerned with mechanisms explaining economic growth and development rather than digital sustainability, responsibility, or circular economies in ecosystems. This is surprising, considering that platforms play a vital role in sharing and reporting data related to these Grand Challenges (e.g., ESG reporting, digital product passports). This gives platforms a pivotal role in measurements of societal, ecological, and economic impact of market offerings. 

Platforms & Ecosystems + Innovation, Policy, and Purpose

Platforms and ecosystems promise accessibility and democratization of value creation and capture by inverting the firm (Parker et al. 2017) or producing new labour markets in a sharing economy (Nian et al. 2021). We have, however, learned that platform providers accumulate power, sometimes leading to the misuse of market dominance (Aral, 2021; Khan, 2019; Gawer, 2022). This is important because platforms and ecosystems affect their environment. Recommendation systems of Instagram, for example, have been perceived as harmful for teenagers, eventually inducing testimonies of leading managers before the US Congress. Peer-to-peer lending platforms affected personal decisions on abortion and women's health (Ozer et al. 2022). Thereby platforms have an impact on important societal issues. Sometimes, however, these impacts are unintended or against initially proclaimed intentions, for instance when crowdfunding platforms fail to tear down socioeconomic barriers (Kim and Hann, 2019). 

Platforms & Ecosystems + New Methodological Approaches

We are eager to widen the set of methodological approaches, including empirical research, case-based research, field studies, design science, behavioural decision-making experiments, and conceptual research. At the same time, we acknowledge that with greater availability of usage, process, or environmental data, novel approaches towards computational research  (Berente et al. 2019) might allow the creation of insights that are able to unravel micro mechanisms in platforms or shed light on the greater complexities of ecosystems. In addition, new ML capabilities suggest novel avenues for qualitative inquiries. 

In summary, we encourage authors to submit their best work on managing platforms and ecosystems to our HICSS minitrack and invite them to engage in collaboration between academia, industry, and policymaking for their research. We thereby welcome submissions from industry and around the world.

In collaboration with the Editorial Board of Electronic Markets (EM), we are proud and happy to provide a fast-track option for selected papers to EM. EM is considered among the leading journals in information systems (impact factor 7.1). The journal is well-known for its research on platforms and ecosystems and thereby provides a perfect fit for submissions to this minitrack.

Bibliography

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• Aral, S. (2021). The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health—And How We Must Adapt. Currency.
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