Description of the session

Over the last two decades, platforms have transformed the way we search for information, buy goods, consume news and media, and travel and move around. By utilizing an ecosystem of autonomous agents to co-create value, digital platforms challenge traditional firms that create value within the boundaries of a company or a supply chain.

Recently, digital platforms have been heralded as enablers of the circular economy. The goal of a circular economy is to decouple resource use from economic growth. By empowering the sharing economy and servitization, digital platforms fosters this decoupling. 

Despite its popularity, however, the establishment, growth, and management of digital platforms is not widely understood. The lecture offers deeper insight into the unique value-creating and value capture mechanisms, complementor ecosystem, and other characteristics of platforms that explain success or failure. It combines this theme with the circular economy, another less well understood topic, to discuss how they can combine successfully.

what can participants expect as key learning of this session?

about the importance to distinguish between the management of traditional and platform businesses

• about different types of platform businesses
• to understand the strategic and tactical drivers of successful digital platform businesses
• about the goal and characteristics of the circular economy
• what it takes to combine circular economy with digital platform thinking

short bio about the lecturer

Prof. Dr. Carla Irene Koen is Professor of Sustainable Innovation at Tias School for Business and Society, Tilburg. She is Visiting Professor at Antwerp Management School and Rotterdam School of Management. 

She received her PhD and Master's degree in International Political Economy from the University of Warwick in the UK. Carla worked as a researcher at Sophia University (Tokyo), the Max-Planck-Institut für Sozialforschung (Cologne), and the Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung (Berlin). 

Carla Koen's expertise lies mainly in the field of sustainable and circular innovation strategy, entrepreneurship, and international comparative research on organisation, management and innovation. She is the author of a book on comparative international management and of several national and international publications in journals such as Organization Studies, Current Topics in Management, Management Executive, Research in International Business and Finance, etc.

Carla is a professor, consultant, coach, and management trainer for companies in various sectors such as, chemistry, medical diagnostics, life & material sciences, agri & food, nanotechnology, lighting, etc. She works with governments, multinational companies and start-ups.

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