The Emergence of Platforms and Platformization
The emergence of digital, social, algorithmic, and AI-automated and augmented platforms – from Facebook’s 2004 launch and Amazon’s 2006 cloud services debut, through Instagram’s 2010 mobile-first approach and TikTok’s 2016 emergence, to today’s enterprise systems like Salesforce, SAP, and Adobe Commerce – marks a fundamental transformation of how value is created, distributed, and captured in today’s economy, while platformization – the extension of platform mechanisms into broader digital and physical spaces – is reshaping entire industries and ways of working. Together, these forces represent not just technological change but a new organizational, cultural, and management logic that leaders must understand and navigate.
Platforms create value primarily by facilitating interactions between users while harvesting data that enhances their functionality. In Platform Society, a trio of Dutch researchers, José van Dijck, Thomas Poell, and Martijn De Waal, argue that this dynamic also shapes what they call “platformed sociality” – new forms of connection, collaboration, and commerce that become increasingly indispensable – yet potentially coercive – to participants (2018: 4). Three key mechanisms drive this transformation: datafication (converting social activities into quantified data), commodification (transforming interactions into monetary value), and selection (curating what users see and do). These mechanisms are evident in how TikTok’s algorithm shapes content creation, how Amazon Business optimizes B2B transactions, and how Salesforce’s CRM shapes customer relationships.
The process of platformization extends these dynamics beyond traditional platform businesses. Since 2015, this transformation has accelerated dramatically with the widespread adoption of cloud computing, mobile technologies, and API-driven architectures. As Poell, the University of Toronto’s David Nieborg, and Cornell’s Brooke Erin Duffy argue in their later book, Platforms and Cultural Production, this transformation operates on three levels: technical (integration of platform infrastructures), economic (shift toward platform-style business models), and cultural (alteration of how content is created and valued). Traditional organizational boundaries blur as platform logic reshapes internal operations and external relationships (2022: 17).
This evolution creates what Wharton’s Marco Guillen terms the “platform paradox” in which platforms simultaneously enable unprecedented connectivity while constraining behavior through their architectural choices and business models, often undermining the very human connections they claim to facilitate (2020: 45). Work itself becomes increasingly “platformized” through digital tools that quantify, optimize, and mediate professional activities. often at the cost of worker autonomy and wellbeing. In his groundbreaking Platform Capitalism, Canadian digital economy researcher and Kings College London faculty Nick Srnicek argues that this dynamic extends beyond digital spaces to reshape physical infrastructure, traditional industries, and longstanding ways of working (2016: 42). A deeper risk is that this evolution will perpetuate or deepen inequalities in existing data while introducing new forms of workplace surveillance and control. This shift accelerated dramatically during the 2020-2022 pandemic period, when platforms became essential infrastructure for compulsory remote work, commerce, and social connection.
For many business leaders, the challenge isn’t whether to engage with platforms but how to maintain strategic autonomy while leveraging their benefits. This requires developing a kind of “platform thinking” – understanding how platform mechanisms shape behavior and value creation while building strategies to harness their power without becoming completely dependent on them (Parker, Van Alstyne, and Choudary, 2016: 82). Creative leaders face particular challenges as they attempt to foster authentic innovation within increasingly AI-augmented workflows. As Harvard’s Teresa Amabile notes, maintaining intrinsic motivation remains crucial yet becomes increasingly difficult when creative processes are mediated by algorithms and AI tools (2020). Leaders must find new ways to nurture human creativity and meaningful collaboration while leveraging powerful but potentially constraining platform capabilities. This delicate balance requires what the ability to harness both human imagination and technological affordances in service of genuine creativity and innovation.
Looking ahead, the deep integration of AI into platform infrastructure – marked by GitHub Copilot’s 2021 launch, ChatGPT’s 2022 debut, and the 2023-24 wave of AI integration across major platforms – would appear to intensify both opportunities and risks. Microsoft’s coding tools and LinkedIn’s AI-powered recruiting features promise enhanced productivity, while TikTok’s algorithmic content creation features and Meta’s AI-driven ad targeting systems reshape and arguably democratize creative work and marketing. Salesforce’s Einstein AI and Adobe’s Sensei transform customer interaction and content production, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT integration across platforms accelerates both the automation andf potential augmentation of knowledge work. At the same time, these developments threaten to amplify the commodification of human behavior and experience while also raising new questions about algorithmic bias, creative ownership, professional agency, and the sustainable and human-centered use of AI.
Leaders face mounting pressure to balance platform-driven efficiency, speed, and scale with human dignity, authentic creativity, and meaningful work. More broadly, leaders also need to remain attuned to how “the transformations of cultural production,” as Duffy, Poell, and Nieborg conclude, require “an appreciation for the mutual articulation between institutional changes and shifting cultural practices” (2019: 6). As generative AI becomes embedded in everything from Slack’s communication tools to SAP’s enterprise systems, organizations must develop not just technical understanding but ethical frameworks for protecting and advancing human agency and wellbeing in an increasingly platformized world.
References
Teresa M. Amabile (2020) “Creativity, Artificial Intelligence, and a World of Surprises,” Academy of Management Discoveries 6(3), 351-354.
Brooke Erin Duffy, Thomas Poell, and David B. Nieborg (2019) “Platform Practices in the Cultural Industries: Creativity, Labor, and Citizenship,” Social media + Society, October-December 2019: 1-8.
Marco Guillen (2020) The Platform Paradox: How Digital Business Models Are Changing, Wharton School Press.
Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary (2016) Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You, W. W. Norton & Company.
Thomas Poell, David B. Nieborg, Brooke Erin Duffy (2022) Platforms and Cultural Production, Polity Press.
Nick Srnicek (2016) Platform Capitalism, Polity Press.
José van Dijck, Thomas Poell, and Martijn De Waal (2018) The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World, Oxford University Press.