Designing platform ecosystems for collaboration, innovation and growth

PurposeThis paper explores the design dimensions that foster identity construction, legitimation, and growth of digitally mediated platform ecosystems.Design/methodology/approachA midrange theorizing approach was adopted to assimilate and induct the extant literature on ecosystems, platform business models and innovation, yielding testable propositions on ecosystem design for empirical testing.FindingsThe paper suggests that decentralized governance, partner engagement and shared context are three dimensions of criticality for designing a distinct platform ecosystem. These design dimensions nurture interactions, transactions, relationships between platform participants and external actors to make ecosystems authentic and legitimate. Decentralization is relevant for inducing flexibility and autonomy of participants on the platform. Engagement impacts the intensity of relationships the platform has with other firms in the ecosystem, while shared context is essential for creating knowledge and harnessing innovation on the platform.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper identifies a set of three testable propositions on ecosystem design for further empirical analysis by ecosystem researchers.Practical implicationsTo achieve future readiness, organizations must become resilient to the market environment. With that intent, traditional businesses are revising their operating models to become more collaborative, integrative and efficient. Adoption of digital initiatives for redesigning towards platform ecosystems will make traditional models more relevant as markets evolve. But as a new organization form, platform ecosystem faces the challenge of legitimacy. Author suggests that managers use the organization design lever to meet the challenge.Originality/valueEmergence of platform-based businesses and transformation of existing models to platform ecosystems are impacting today's competitive environment. During initial phases of evolution, ecosystems aim for identity and legitimacy. The authors contribute to organizational aspects of the platform ecosystem design literature by identifying decentralization of governance, engagement and shared context as dimensions of criticality for future-ready platforms. Secondly, these dimensions are associated with identity and legitimation of platform ecosystems. Decentralization is relevant for supply-side producers of goods and services on the platform, engagement has impact on both supply and demand-side participants of platforms, and shared context is essential for knowledge creation and harnessing innovation.

Global Research Decentralized Autonomous Organization (GR-DAO): A DAO of Global Researchers

The latest trend in Blockchain formation is to utilize decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) in many verticals. To date, little attention has been given to address the global research domain due to the difficulty in creating a comprehensive framework that can marry the cutting edge of academic grade scientific research with a decentralized governance body of researchers. A global research decentralized autonomous organization (GR-DAO) would have a profound impact on the research community academically, commercially, and the public good. In this paper, we propose the GR-DAO as a global community of researchers committed to collectively creating knowledge and sharing it with the world. Scientific research is the means for knowledge creation and learning. The GR-DAO provides the guidance, community and technological solutions for the evolution of a global research infrastructure and environment. Through its design, the GR-DAO embraces, enhances and extends the model of research, research on decentralization and DAO as a model for decentralised and autonomous organizing. This design, in turn, improves most of the uses for and applications of research for the greater good of society. The paper examines the core motivation, purpose and design of the GR-DAO, its strategy to embrace, enhance and extend the research ecosystem, and the GR-DAO design uses across the DAO ecosystem

A comparative analysis of the platforms for decentralized autonomous organizations in the Ethereum blockchain

Blockchain technology has enabled a new kind of distributed systems. Beyond its early applications in Finance, it has also allowed the emergence of novel new ways of governance and coordination. The most relevant of these are the so-called Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). DAOs typically implement decision-making systems to make it possible for their online community to reach agreements. As a result of these agreements, the DAO operates automatically by executing the appropriate portion of code on the blockchain network (e.g., hire people, delivers payments, invests in financial products, etc). In the last few years, several platforms such as Aragon, DAOstack and DAOhaus, have emerged to facilitate the creation of DAOs. As a result, hundreds of these new organizations have appeared, with their communities interacting mediated by blockchain. However, the literature has yet to appropriately explore empirically this phenomena. In this paper, we aim to shed light on the current state of the DAO ecosystem. We review the three main platforms nowadays (Aragon, DAOstack, DAOhaus) which facilitate the creation and management of DAOs. Thus, we introduce their main differences, and compare them using quantitative metrics. For such comparison, we retrieve data from both the main Ethereum network (mainnet) and a parallel Ethereum network (xDai). We analyze data from 72,320 users and 2,353 DAO communities in order to study the three ecosystems across four dimensions: growth, activity, voting system and funds. Our results show that there are notable differences among the DAO platforms in terms of growth and activity, and also in terms of voting results. Still, we consider that our work is only a first step and that further research is needed to better understand these communities, and evaluate their level of accomplishment in reaching decentralized governance.

Subnational Capital Finance

Chapter 1 introduces the book by presenting the main arguments that information resolution is a necessary component of SNG capital market development and access to external financing. It also argues that local policy and management agency vis-à-vis financial sector firms is critical to achieve SNG governance tasks in the face of decentralized governance and growing local service pressures. This chapter defines the key terminology of information problems, information institutions, and information resolution. It situates the focus on SNGs, and more narrowly on policy makers at the city level, that are embedded within the national contexts and financial markets. Finally, the chapter identifies the book’s contributions and details the organization of the book’s remaining chapters.

Maintaining food security during difficult times: An experience of COVID-19 in Kerala

Lockdown linked to the COVID-19 pandemic generated food security associated panic among the general population. This article is an exercise to document actions taken by the Government of Kerala to prevent people from starving during such difficult times of lockdown. Inclusive interventions such as provision of dry ration free of cost, operating community kitchens and engaging in direct cash transfers were some of the highlights of the measures taken by the Government in Kerala to address the food crisis in the state. These efforts are evidence for the government’s commitment towards managing the crisis and this was possible through the involvement of effective decentralized governance through local self-government institutions and community organizations.

Smart Accounts for Decentralized Governance on Smart Cities

This paper introduces state-of-the-art possibilities for using smart contracts capabilities for governance. Assisted by blockchain, the use of these tools can provide a transition that society currently needs due the huge amount of information that reaches citizens. The core mechanism of this study lies within the scope of smart accounts and digital identities. These topics enclose smart cities trends that seek to increase citizens’ participation in the social decision making process, in a transparent way that is usually managed throughout decentralized systems. We define a set of available features that can automatically guide the flow of resources, after the conclusions of voting processes also conducted on trusted environments of distributed ledgers. By presenting innovative ideas and didactically describing the possibilities, we aim to promote awareness of blockchain capabilities among readers, students, decisions makers and, mainly, the younger generation.

The Politics of Neoliberal Rituals

Exploring the similarities between the Future of Enterprise Technology trade fairs and the ITU AI for Food Summit, this chapter focuses on trade fairs as spaces of political performance. It explores how trade fairs do politics and what the implications of this are. The chapter begins by showing that trade fairs play a crucial role in generating and enshrining the legitimacy and authority of decentralized, distributed market orders that are in constant change. The trade fairs are rituals where a “tournament of values” is performed through which the hierarchies of this order are negotiated. This helps manage but also enshrine the uncertainties associated with decentralized governance. Second, as ritual performances more generally, trade fairs engage the sacred and magical and the affective and embodied to anchor order not only broadly but deeply and individually. Finally, the chapter discusses the quality of the ordering performed in trade fairs, suggesting that what is performed in the trade fair is a form of institutionalized liminality. However, and contrary to the hopes Victor Turner placed in institutionalized liminality, here it is far from progressive. It builds inegalitarian instability into our societies. Precisely because of this, tending to trade fairs is of fundamental import. The trade fair form has become pervasive in governance, including when it involves public institutions (as epitomized by the AI for Good Summit). Understanding trade fairs as ritual political performance at the core of neoliberalism is therefore a condition intervening politically and for realizing the urgency of imagining alternative forms of governing.