In our breakfast seminar “From Porter to Platforms” we had the pleasure to hear Prof. Darek Haftor (Linnaeus University) talking about how platform oriented business solutions facilitated through digitalization are enabling new ways to create innovation and economic value.

It’s undeniable that the way to create value has changed underpinned by digitalization. During the presentation, Derek highlighted the dualistic view between an old (current and historical) and a new perspective and the impact that it has in companies and value creation processes.

Here are some pairs of notions of this dualistic view:

• According to old perspectives, value is mainly created in the firm internally and expressed in external transformations through transactions. The new digital perspective enables value creation directly through external transactions with external resources.
• Regarding the difference between the industry-based view of the firm and the resource-based view of the firm, the application of a resource-based view of a firm has been more applied due to the digitalization.
• According to the prevalent old perspective“, a firm’s success is conditioned by its internal resources,” and the “sustained advantage of the firm is conditioned by the uniqueness of the firm’s resources”. Up to now, digitalization has been used mainly to enhance firm internal transformation. In this aspect, a major breakthrough created with the new perspective is represented by how digitalization enhances the firm’s external changes related to transactions and network effects.

We are well acquainted about how digitalization has been used to improve products and processes. But from now on maybe using digitalization in business models will be even more powerful enabling disruptions across different industries. These business models will very well take the form of platforms, where “a platform business allow value creation and value appropriations interactions between external producers and consumers, enabled by the use of Digital Technologies, to reduce the barriers of time and space, and thus increase access.

Are you interested in joining our upcoming events? Read more here.