I learned so much from the Digital Platform Ecosystems (DPE) Research Group last week. Prof. Andreas König spoke about the mindset challenges when traditional firms try to act like platforms, and his PhD students Moritz Maier and Verena Kummer elaborated on the related ideas (see their full insights in the video)

I went to speak about my research on digital disruption and AI (my Nokia papers and Platform Strategy book). But the best part was what I learned from the DPE scholars.

We reflected a lot on managing collaboration and trust in complex ecosystems.

When you can manage your partners’ emotions, mutual trust and collaboration become possible — but sustaining that is never easy.

It also raised key questions I keep thinking about:

1. Why do established firms struggle to create opportunities with digital platforms and platform-based business models?
2. How can firms create sufficient initial excitement to get a critical mass of partners involved?
3. And how can they turn the initial excitement into focused, coordinated actions?

We got so excited about these topics that we even developed an initial draft for a new research paper. The ability to create collaborations, engage partners, and build new value adding ecosystems is essential for firms in the future. We want build theory to help them do that.

Big thanks to the whole DPE group for your kindness and intellectual inspiration! Special thanks to Dr. Hendrike Werwigk for our in-depth conversation about your fantastic research and Bianca Bittner for organizing everything so smoothly!