The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital platforms is reconfiguring how organizations create, deliver, and capture value. As platform-based business models proliferate across industries, AI introduces new mechanisms of learning, data-driven value creation, and ecosystem evolution within two-sided and multi-sided platforms. This special issue assembles eight studies that examine AI-enabled platform business model innovation from diverse theoretical, methodological, and sectoral perspectives, including agri-food sustainability, semiconductor manufacturing, ESG rating platforms, open-source ecosystems, B2B platforms, global innovation dynamics, entertainment industry leadership, and blockchain-enabled decentralized systems. This editorial situates these contributions within the broader research trajectory on digital transformation and platform thinking and develops a structured synthesis that highlights recurring patterns across studies. Building on this synthesis, it proposes an integrative conceptual Framework for AI-driven Platform Business Model Transformation, conceptualizing the dynamic alignment and co-evolution among AI roles, platform configurations, and value creation mechanisms. In particular, the framework advances a processual understanding of platform transformation and identifies data externalities as central driver of learning-based value creation. Finally, the editorial outlines a future research agenda grounded in the insights of the special issue, emphasizing the need for further investigation of co-evolutionary dynamics, governance mechanisms, and the theoretical and methodological approaches required to explain AI-enabled platform innovation.

Platforms have become a dominant model for value creation, enabling interactions among multiple customer sides and generating indirect cross-side network externalities. While examples such as Airbnb and Uber illustrate their disruptive potential, recent research demonstrates that legacy firms can also leverage platform mechanisms for sustainable growth by activating existing assets, relationships, and data. Building on prior work, we distinguish three archetypes—transactional, innovation, and orthogonal platforms—and show how Platform Thinking can address five recurrent business problems in established organizations, including missing transactions and innovation bottlenecks. The Digital Phoenix Effect describes how incumbents ignite dormant potential rather than disrupt their core. Cases such as Siemens, AXA, and Eni illustrate this phenomenon. Looking ahead, Generative AI acts as a catalyst for internal platforms, accelerating knowledge exchange and co-creation, as exemplified by the Fujitsu case. Together, platforms and GenAI offer a strategic pathway for legacy firms to remain competitive, resilient, and future-proof.

Platforms are typically associated with digital infrastructures, algorithmic mediation, and large-scale network effects. Yet many organizations create platform value without relying on digital intermediation, raising the question of how non-digital platforms evolve over time. This study examines the 25-year evolution of the Digital Innovation Observatories,11For the review team, the authors have anonymized the case to preserve confidentiality and ensure the rigor of the double-blind review procedure. As explained in the methodology, all the authors hold roles within the studied organization, which could otherwise compromise the anonymity of the authorship. At the end of the review process, the organization’s name and the interviewees’ names will be disclosed. an Italian applied research center that orchestrates in-person interactions between technology providers and adopters across multiple thematic communities. Drawing on a longitudinal single-case study, we identify three evolutionary phases (launch, consolidation, and maturity) and analyze evolution at two levels (the single platform initiative and the organizational portfolio). Findings show that the evolution of non-digital platforms does not primarily depend on digital generativity or on scaling through existing user bases. Instead, it relies on the identification of a repeatable format, defined as a codified set of rules governing interactions, platform structure, and life cycle, which enables horizontal replication across adjacent fields. This process is sustained by two forms of knowledge as idle assets: activity-based knowledge, which supports format codification and internal efficiency, and content-based knowledge, which fuels customer value creation and vertical digital expansion. A matrix organizational structure and individual entrepreneurial agency jointly leverage this knowledge over time. The study contributes to platform research by explaining how non-digital platforms evolve horizontally and vertically through compound networks, format-based replication, and knowledge mobilization rather than through purely digital mechanisms.

Platforms have revolutionized value creation by enabling efficient matchmaking between customer groups. While traditionally associated with external value exchange, platform thinking represents the mechanism that, through matchmaking, supports established firms to innovate by orchestrating available resources. While platforms are known in the literature for creating value by efficiently connecting external customer groups, their potential to support efficient collaboration among internal units in established organizations remains underexplored. How to adopt platform thinking to promote intra-organizational collaboration is also a problem faced by the manager of Confcooperative Lombardia, a business association supporting cooperatives in value creation, seeking to improve internal collaboration. By adopting a Design Science Research, which included physical and digital workshops involving the entire organization, this study developed an artifact that illustrates how platforms can serve as a framework for redesigning collaboration and knowledge sharing between internal units. Matchmaking becomes a ritual that employees can flexibly adopt to ask for support and share best practices. This research reframes platforms as tools for guiding collaboration within organizations, extending beyond their digital functionality. Since the platform operates as an intra-organizational process rather than a digital system, its functioning depends on empowering individuals, who collectively act as the algorithm that drives matchmaking and knowledge exchange. Employees are guided by agile and platform thinking as cultural frameworks that sustain collaboration, presenting platforms as processes that can be scaled across the organization. By leveraging this process, organizations can better utilize resources distributed across various units. Managers, in turn, can adopt platform thinking into organizational culture to create a scalable process that guides internal collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Digital platforms have become a dominant logic for value creation and innovation, yet legacy firms still struggle to translate platform principles into actionable organizational transformation. A central reason is cognitive: managers often mis-frame platforms as digital services rather than as ecosystem-based value architectures.This paper adopts a Design Science approach to develop and refine the Platform Thinking Journey, a composite managerial artifact that supports platform transformation in incumbent firms. Developed through a three-year, multi-firm collaboration within the Platform Thinking HUB, the artifact evolved across three iterative waves from exploratory tools into a validated journey structured around four phases: Framing, Design, Ignition, and Growth.The resulting Platform Thinking Journey combines a process model, bounded decision cycles, and an integrated physical and digital, or “phygital”, support architecture, including cards, canvases, workshops, digital templates, and a GenAI co-thinker. Its core mechanism is to make platform theory actionable by presenting structured alternatives grounded in the literature, focusing managerial attention, reducing ambiguity, and aligning interpretation before teams consolidate choices through design tools and milestones.The study contributes to platform and innovation management research by showing how platform transformation can be actively supported through design, and by identifying five design principles for incumbent firms: reframing from products to interactions before solutioning, structuring the process as bounded decision cycles, materializing reasoning through boundary objects, balancing conceptual depth with cognitive manageability, and sustaining reflection through phygital continuity. Methodologically, the paper offers a rigorous application of Design Science to a non-technical managerial artifact in a multi-wave, multi-firm collaborative setting.For managers, the Platform Thinking Journey provides a structured way to reframe platform opportunities, make key design choices explicit, and sustain reflection across the transformation process.

System-level innovation problems increasingly require firms to integrate heterogeneous and distant knowledge domains, yet existing open innovation research offers limited insight into how such knowledge creation processes are shaped and orchestrated. This study examines how physical knowledge contributors (PKCs), a distinct type of open innovation intermediary, support organizations in addressing system-level innovation problems. Integrating absorptive capacity and platform research, we conduct an in-depth exploratory case study of BlueThink, a PKC that support innovation seekers by leveraging internal competencies, physical laboratory infrastructures, and a curated network of solvers.Our findings show that knowledge acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation - the constitutive dimensions of absorptive capacity - unfold through an iterative, cyclical process involving the PKC, the seeker, and multiple solvers, rather than through a linear, firm-bounded sequence. PKCs actively participate in knowledge creation by providing a cultural and physical inter-medium that enables learning-by-doing, supports agile experimentation, and facilitates the recombination of partial solutions into system-level configurations.We propose an interpretive model in which PKCs operate as orchestrative two-sided platforms that extend and, in some phases, temporarily substitute for the seeker’s absorptive capacity. By contrasting PKCs with the more widely studied virtual knowledge brokers or digital intermediaries, this study advances our understanding of how physical intermediaries contribute to knowledge creation in complex innovation processes.

Legacy firms struggle to adapt in a business environment increasingly shaped by platform-based models. While research has emphasized how digital-native companies harness network effects and ecosystems, less is known about how incumbents apply platform thinking to address their own challenges. We analyzed 140 platform initiatives launched by S&P 500 companies to understand how legacy firms use platforms in practice. Our findings reveal five recurring business problems that incumbents address through platform thinking: transaction inefficiencies, evolving customer demands, innovation bottlenecks, underutilized data, and lack of data for strategic insights. We identify corresponding “platform thinking hacks” that map these problems to specific platform mechanisms. The study contributes by reframing platform thinking as a problem-driven strategic lens for legacy firms. For managers, it offers a taxonomy and roadmap to selectively embed platform elements without abandoning existing business models.

The conventional view of platforms, focused on transactional, profit-driven models, has increasingly been challenged by platform cooperatives that aim to advance social goals and fairer value redistribution. By merging digital platforms with cooperative values, organizations like Radish and Stocksy exemplify this shift. Despite growing interest in platform cooperatives, they often experience governance and operational challenges that prevent long-term value creation. This perspective article examines how the platform business model, including both digital and non-digital platforms, can serve as a lens for studying platform cooperatives by examining how the three platform pillars have been applied in prior research. In doing so, this paper offers an expanded conceptualization of platform cooperatives as platform business models characterized by distinctive customer roles and governance rules. This contributes to research on platform cooperatives by identifying novel ways to address their governance and operational challenges. It also contributes to the broader platform literature by expanding our understanding of platform governance and how platform business models can connect with local contexts. Finally, it offers practical insights for platform cooperative founders designing value flows by unlocking new platform-based strategies for long-term value creation.

Innovation projects play a crucial role in maintaining competitive advantage but often experience high failure rates. In this article, we examine how behavioral biases influence supplier resource management in failed innovation projects. Using resource orchestration theory as a lens, we analyze six failed projects, each involving two suppliers, to explore how cognitive biases disrupt critical resource management activities, including structuring, bundling, and leveraging. Key biases, such as overconfidence, optimism, and strategic misrepresentation, were found to skew decision making, prioritizing technical competencies over relational history during supplier selection. This misalignment impaired supplier interactions and knowledge-sharing practices, ultimately contributing to project failure. The findings offer a novel perspective on how cognitive biases undermine resource orchestration and highlight the importance of incorporating collaborative history into supplier selection frameworks. Addressing these biases can significantly improve decision-making processes and enhance the success of innovation projects.

When platform businesses permit other platforms to embed within their own, or offer their own functionality hosted on another platform, they can gain access to new markets and customers, and improve the user experience of current customers. But platform owners must also consider whether such a relationship will affect the integrity of their brand and what it means for customer relationships. Research can help guide leaders through the strategic implications of nesting decisions.

The concept of Multi-Sided Platforms (MSPs) has significantly impacted the management field by facilitating interactions between distinct, interdependent groups, revolutionizing numerous industries. While extensive research has examined platform models, further exploration of MSPs in Business-to-Business (B2B) settings, particularly at the supply chain level, remains necessary. This paper critically examines the role of technology-enabled MSPs within B2B environments, highlighting their distinct challenges and opportunities for supply chain ecosystems. We review existing literature on B2B platforms, classifying studies according to the main platform typologies: transactional, innovation, and orthogonal. We identify three key roles these platforms play in supply chain management: enabling information sharing and collaboration, enhancing existing processes, and supporting transformation. Additionally, we investigate five central themes in B2B relationships: power dynamics and governance, resource allocation and optimization, communication dynamics, competence development and learning, and resilience and adaptability. The findings underscore the transformative potential of MSPs in B2B contexts, particularly in driving innovation, improving operational efficiencies, and creating new forms of value. These insights also serve to introduce the eight papers in this special issue and frame three propositions for future research.

Overview: Can business-to-business (B2B) platforms copy the proven strategy playbooks from the consumer sector? Yes and no. In B2B, platforms apply specific strategies to overcome growth-limiting circumstances, like heterogeneity among ex-ante relationships between a limited number of potential users. This means that they weigh up the interests of individual user groups and allow for greater diversity of interactions. Based on an extensive study of six German B2B platforms, we identified three strategic initiatives that extend the consumer-oriented (X2C) playbook: embracing intermediaries, building trust, and embedding across multiple sides. We provide three actionable principles practitioners can apply to build B2B platforms.

We live in a complex and hybrid world in which the digital and physical realms have never been so closely intertwined. Managerial practices are increasingly merging to give rise to more agile approaches that align with the world we inhabit. In this study, we explore the case of xFarm, a scaleup that has developed a unique form of digital leadership to manage the innovation process. This approach allows for the coexistence of both physical and digital dimensions. We identify the key drivers and specific practices that facilitate this hybrid approach. Digital leadership is thus defined as the ability to navigate such complexity and to adapt to the evolving needs of hybrid situations. This study offers three main takeaways that digital leaders can use to manage hybrid environments. These serve as reference points for setting a direction, while specific behaviors should be tailored to the particular field, in line with agile principles.

Digital platforms are increasingly dominating markets by bringing together two or more groups of users and facilitating the exchange of value between them. Although several significant issues concerning the dynamics of digital platforms have been addressed, much of the research effort has focused on the platform owner. On the other hand, research on complementors neither takes into account the individual level nor clearly shows what an individual complementor can do to benefit from platform participation. By studying the evolving relationship between YouTube and its ecosystem of complementors (content creators), we shed light on the strategies that complementors use to progressively avoid but still benefit from platform governance. We find that content creators are, first, in a mutual relationship with the YouTube platform, benefiting from direct monetization. Then, they shift to commensalism as the relationship evolves, allowing them to avoid YouTube's governance and take advantage of multi‐homing. Our findings illuminate the effects of platform governance, particularly how it shapes the actions of complementors.

Today’s world requires new approaches to innovation that leverage continuous testing and pivoting. Speed and the ability to respond to exogenous shocks are becoming increasingly important in both theory and practice. Following the introduction of the Agile Manifesto in 2001, a wide range of industries have adopted agile approaches, which differ from other ways of managing innovation projects by promoting flexibility and the rapid development of new solutions. Despite the proliferation of agile approaches across industries, the literature lacks a systematic understanding of their underlying elements. Therefore, we conduct a systematic literature review using a text mining technique to longitudinally explore the evolutionary dynamics of the field. Analyzing the results through the dichotomous lens of contingency and configuration theories, we show that the agile literature can be systematized into two perspectives: agile-as-a-tool in the contingency perspective, and agile-as-a-culture in the configuration perspective. Our review reveals underexplored intersections in the field of innovation and provides interesting insights into these two perspectives. We also propose a research agenda to shed light on these emerging perspectives in the agile innovation and management literature.

PurposeThis study investigates the application of collaborative inquiry within innovation management, employing platform thinking to address challenges of generalizability and relevance. The aim is to integrate Collaborative Inquiry methods, characterized by participatory, diffuse, and reflective practices, to transform research into a tool for impactful change in organizations in the field of innovation management.Design/methodology/approachA longitudinal participatory case study approach focuses on the IDeaLs case-a research platform that collaborated with multiple companies over several years. The data gathered and analyzed comes from the research project within the research platforms over the first two editions and from the research platform management and coordination activities.FindingsThe study introduces the Collaborative Research Platform Approach (CRPA), demonstrating its effectiveness in addressing typical constraints of traditional research methodologies through a real-world application within the IDeaLs case. The findings highlight the CRPA's potential in fostering a dynamic, co-creative research environment that bridges theoretical knowledge with practical applications, thus enhancing both scholarly and organizational outcomes while pursuing a future change within the organizations.Research limitations/implicationsThere are two main research implications. First, it proposes platform thinking as a theoretical lens to read a multi-stakeholder phenomenon in the research domain, confirming its nature of value-creation mechanisms, using it outside the business model and strategic space. Second, it offers a methodological contribution by presenting the CRPA framework.Practical implicationsThe CRPA framework offers organizations a structured approach to managing collaborative research projects that align with both academic rigor and practical relevance. Companies engaged in the study reported enhanced ability to implement actionable insights from research, influencing real-time decision-making processes.Social implicationsBy fostering collaborative engagements across multiple stakeholders, the CRPA promotes a research culture that values inclusivity and practical impact, potentially leading to broader societal benefits through improved innovation management practices.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the innovation management field by proposing the CRPA, which integrates principles of Platform Thinking with Collaborative Inquiry. This novel approach is designed to improve the applicability and scope of innovation research, offering a robust framework that enhances engagement and utility across academic and business domains. It uses platforms as a theoretical lens to read a multi-stakeholder environment in the research domain.

Purpose This study investigates the sustainability models of non-profit and hybrid organizations, which aim to balance economic, social and environmental objectives. The research introduces the Sustainability Model Canvas to analyze these organizations and identify common patterns, unique characteristics and managerial insights to balance the triple bottom line. Design/methodology/approach The research utilizes the Sustainability Model Canvas to examine the sustainability models of 200 non-profit and hybrid organizations. Data were collected from secondary sources, including articles, reports and websites. The analysis was conducted using the activity system theoretical framework, which helped to identify design elements and themes within the business models of the studied organizations. Findings The study reveals four primary sustainability model patterns: donated income, earned income, public income and auto-generated income. An additional mixed approach pattern is identified, combining elements from the four primary patterns. The research highlights the parallels between these sustainability models and multi-sided platform business models, offering managerial suggestions for leveraging these patterns to achieve sustainability. Research limitations/implications The study is based on secondary data, which may limit the depth of insights compared to primary data collection. At the same time, the chance to consider hybrid organization through multi-sided platform lenses provides relevant contributions to both the literature streams. Practical implications The identified sustainability model patterns and managerial suggestions can serve as blueprints for non-profit and hybrid organizations aiming to design or innovate their sustainability models. The Sustainability Model Canvas offers a practical tool for organizations to visualize and balance their triple bottom line objectives. Social implications The research underscores the importance of integrating social and environmental considerations into business models, promoting a holistic approach to sustainability that can lead to broader social and environmental benefits. Originality/value This research contributes to the business model literature by extending the focus beyond traditional profit-oriented organizations to include non-profit and hybrid organizations. The introduction of the Sustainability Model Canvas provides a new tool for designing and analyzing sustainability-oriented business models. The study also suggests considering sustainability models as multi-sided platforms, offering new insights for both academic and practical applications.

This study explores how resilience is activated in pairs fostering innovation. On the one hand, a growing body of literature affirms pairs as a form of collaboration adept at instigating and developing breakthrough innovations. On the other hand, innovation inevitably entails failures and setbacks requiring resilience to thrive. As such, numerous scholars call for investigating how resilience works at different level of analysis in organizations: while much has been said at the individual and organizational levels, the literature is mostly silent on how resilience is activated and emerges through social connections. Therefore, this study explores how resilience emerges, and how it is nurtured and sustained in pairs facing innovation crises. Our multiple case study using data from ten innovation pairs in different industries shows that a pair's intimate environment enables resilience, and this intimacy activates two dynamics. First, it facilitates compassionate witnessing, the creation of cohesiveness within the pair, and mutual engagement to move forward. Second, it enables relational redundancy with actors both within and outside the pair's reference group, which is crucial to understanding who to trust and which direction to pursue. From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the literature on resilience and pairs. From a managerial perspective, our study suggests relying on pairs as a possible form of collaboration to nurture resilience in innovation.