Platform businesses add value by facilitating interactions between customers who are attracted in part by network externalities. Two-sided platform businesses with low costs of reversing participation status have become more important with the rise of the Internet. This essay is concerned with new businesses of this sort and the initial critical mass hurdle that they generally seem to face. In a very general model, it shows how this hurdle depends on the nature of network effects, the dynamics of customer behavior, and the distribution of customer tastes. Weak, plausible assumptions about adjustment processes imply that platforms must get a sufficient number of members of both sides on board to launch successfully.

Platform businesses add value by facilitating interactions between customers who are attracted in part by network externalities. Two-sided platform businesses with low costs of reversing participation status have become more important with the rise of the internet. This essay is concerned with new businesses of this sort and with the initial critical mass hurdle that they generally seem to face.

Platform businesses add value by facilitating interactions between customers who are attracted in part by network externalities. Two-sided platform businesses with low costs of reversing participation status have become more important with the rise of the Internet. This essay is concerned with new businesses of this sort and the initial critical mass hurdle that they generally seem to face. In a very general model, it shows how this hurdle depends on the nature of network effects, the dynamics of customer behavior, and the distribution of customer tastes. Weak, plausible assumptions about adjustment processes imply that platforms must get a sufficient number of members of both sides on board to launch successfully.

Paper describing the ACTVAGE ecosystem

This report highlights the factors that unlock success in a platform economy

GitHub repository where developers can download the open source resources of UniversAAL

The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge of, and experience with, post-intensive care impairments among doctors and nurses in the medical and surgical wards at Danish hospitals

Over the last ten years, developments in digital technologies and high penetration rates of communication and information technologies have been fuelling the expansion of digital platforms across sectors, and home care is no exception. Unfortunately, however, the growing body of literature on the platform economy has so far paid little attention to home care and the overlapping field of domestic work. These are segments of the economy characterised for having an overwhelmingly female workforce and being highly precarious and socially undervalued.This report is a first step towards addressing this literature gap on digital platforms and the home care sector in Spain.