Platforms taxonomy
Ecosystem, ownership and governance of the positive platforms
Last December together with Daniele, Valeria and Marta we organized at Cohub, in Milan, one of the many Positive Platforms Design Jam that were held simultaneously around the world.
The initiative was launched by IFTF (Institute For The Future) in order to try to imagine, with a collaborative approach, the possible positive evolution of working practices in the world of platforms, with particular reference to the phenomena related to sharing and gig economy. To deepen and give substance to the project ideas emerged during different jams across the world, Institute for the Future awarded four fellowships.
Submitting our proposal, Positive platforms identity, we won one of the scholarships and on the 15th of February we started our research. Starting from the work produced by various research institutes, our goal is to develop shared guidelines that allow to define the concept of positive platform. We would like to understand which platforms fall into this category, what are the positive parameters that characterize them and how these parameters might influence the health of a platform. Since the phase of organization of the jam we realized that, although the platforms are used daily, there is a lack of culture about it.
Indeed, on a semantic level, the word positive can be articulated in a completely subjective way and the issue becomes even more delicate by associating the term to platforms, whose definition field is still blurred.
What we aim to do with this article (that will probably be the first of a series) is to share our work step by step, to involve those people who want to actively contribute or bring their own point of view, seeking to deepen a theme that is still poorly defined but that will have a huge impact on our personal and working lives.
The process we followed.
We started with research on the existing literature: we looked for, read and selected articles that could help us to enrich our theoretical knowledge on the topic and to understand who in the world was already reflecting on the subject and identify the main lines of thinking. At this link you can find the open and editable version of the bibliography that we are building.
On the basis of the collected material and through some discussions, what has emerged in a predominant way is the recurrence to talk about positive platforms only when they present specific forms of ownership and governance, particularly with regard to cooperative forms. We felt this restriction of the field was not sufficiently convincing, especially if among the positive indicators we were taking into account the solidity and the ability to survive of the already mentioned cooperative platforms. In addition we have realized that the positivity of a platform is often almost exclusively associated with the presence of norms to safeguard workers of the platform. From our experience on the case study of Blablacar in Italy — referring to a study that was conducted to analyze the community to understand the social impact of carpooling — we understood the importance of considering and deepening on other parameters and indicators of positivity.
We therefore decided to expand the field of investigation, building a proto-classification of platforms that would allow us on the one hand not to exclude a priori certain types of platforms and on the other to set the starting point of our analysis. How to try to establish positive parameters adaptable to the multiple identities of the platforms if not starting from their identification?
By studying the different definitions of the platform there was one in particular that impressed us. By indicating its key elements, John Hagel defines the platform as:
“A governance structure […] that determines who can participate, what roles they might play, how they might interact and how disputes get resolved” and a “set of protocols or standards […] to facilitate connection, coordination, and collaboration”.
By creating reflections and discussions within the team, the definition of Hagel has created a short circuit that allowed us to reconfigure our point of view. If with the first classification we had classified the platforms focusing on the type of ecosystem that they generate, we then found it necessary to develop a new taxonomy that would take into account the ownership and governance structures as characterizing parameters.
In this phase of the research we are focusing on the formulation of surveys to be addressed to various case studies of Italian platforms, with the aim of asking questions that allow us to study their peculiar aspects, in their heterogeneity. For this reason, the classification work should be instrumental in collecting data, facilitate their interpretation and help us avoiding bias in the final evaluations.
By choosing to break down the platform and studying separately its ownership, governance and the ecosystem (intended as individual structural elements), we thought it would be easier to obtain comparable data from the surveys. At the same time, after outlining the identity of these individual components, we would be able to analyze the relations and systematize the results, to obtain a photography of the platform model that takes into account its complexity.
This is the tree of the platforms on which we are working on. It is still under development and open to change:
At this link you will find a glossary that collects the definitions of the kind of platforms that we are proposing, and examples for each of these. We know that many of the platforms we’re bringing as examples may fall into multiple categories and probably it is this hybridization that gives strength and character to the platform itself. The document is open to your comments and contributions, anyone interested can share case studies (preferably, but not necessarily, Italian) or insights.
This post was written by Daniele Bucci, Valeria Loreti, Chiara Agamennone, Marta Mainieri
