How Does an Incumbent News Media Organization Become a Platform? Employing Intra-Firm Synergies to Launch the Platform Business Model in a News Agency (original) (raw)

Platform Configuration: A Longitudinal Study and Conceptualization of a Legacy News Publisher's Platform-Related Innovation Practices

Online Media and Global Communication, 2022

Purpose: Publishers are innovating their practices in the face of global platform companies' growing dominance on journalism. This study examines how publishers innovate their editorially oriented activities vis-à-vis third-party platforms with respect to six stages of news production. In doing so, this article introduces and advances platform configuration as a conceptual framework. Design/methodology/approach: This five-year longitudinal case study of a Singaporean legacy news publisher uses a mix-method qualitative approach. It includes in-depth interviews with 35 staff, newsroom observations and close monitoring of the publisher's website and apps. Findings: This study offers three key findings about the publisher's platform configuration. First, multidirectionality: the publisher simultaneously leveraged on platforms' capacities (building platform presence), while also reducing dependence on them (platform counterbalancing). Second, specificity: the publisher added, removed and/or modified editorially oriented activities with respect to the six stages of news production. Third, commitment: the publisher calibrated its Article Note: This article underwent double-blind peer review.

Incumbent Organizations Transform Through Digital Platforms

2020

Incumbent organizations in every industry face the imminent threat of digital organizations, particularly digital platform businesses, becoming their competitors. Digital platforms enable value exchanges among its users and can quickly scale and generate substantial network effects. Incumbents, as part of their digital transformation and business model innovation efforts, should consider using a digital multi-sided platform business model to remain competitive in the sharing economy. In this research-in-progress study, we identify the digital platform threat, briefly discuss business model innovation and the dynamic capabilities theory, present a research methodology for our study, describe six digital platform initiatives at four organizations, and provide a framework classifying digital platform strategies for incumbent organizations.

The strategic challenge of continuous change in multi-platform media organizations – a strategy-as-practice perspective

International Journal of Media Management, 2014

This paper focuses on the complexities of managing multi-platform strategies in the complex and highly dynamic environments of contemporary media markets. Based on a comparative case study of two Nordic media organizations, the paper identifies and articulates two sets of practices through which strategy is managed in the continuously changing print and online environments. While the practices that guide strategy development of print publishing tends to be content driven, brand constrained, commercially steered, and top-down monitored, strategizing for online platforms tends to be more technology driven, brand inspired, interactive, and entrepreneurial. For multi-platform media organizations this type of situation is challenging because the incremental and radical innovations that they pursue are platform specific, instead of aiming at exploitation and exploration on both platforms. To succeed in the market, the paper thus argues, multi-platform media organizations need to develop strategies and organizational practices that allow them to be truly ambidextrous—to pursue both incremental and radical change—on all platforms.

Platform Thinking in Incumbent Firms: From Concept to Capability

2017

Incumbent firms struggle with new forms of competition in today’s increasingly digital environments. To leverage the benefits of innovation ecosystems they often shift focus from products to platforms. However, existing research provides limited insight into how firms actually implement this shift. Addressing this void, we have conducted a comparative case study where we adopt the concept of platform thinking to comprehend what capabilities incumbents need when engaging in innovation ecosystems and how those capabilities are developed.

Digital Platform Tactics: How to Implement Platform Strategy Over Time

Journal of Business Models, 2021

Platform-based business models are increasingly relevant. Scholars mainly focus on the strategic dimension, but what are the tactics to build and evolve digital platforms? This article proposes a novel framework, which assists in subdividing the scope of possible activities of digital platform sponsors in a temporal and contextual manner. The framework comprises four context dimensions (platform attributes, core product, governance, ecosystem) and four lifecycle phases (birth, expan- sion, leadership, renewal). In particular, three key insights emerge regarding the critical role of the leadership phase (in terms of institutional and regulatory influence and the need to build a defense) as well as a lack of studies in the renewal phase.

The future of national news agencies in Europe - Case study 4: Business model innovation in media-owned national news agencies

2019

This study examines business model innovation in media-owned national news agencies through a case-study analysis of the PA (UK); TT (Sweden), and APA (Austria). Responding to growing competition and technological changes, the owners of the agencies mandated a search for a new business model. This paper argues that agencies diversified their businesses in two key ways: building new value-added products and services and by searching for new corporate and institutional customers. As such, they adopted an innovative diversified, model that can be conceptualized as a multi-sided platform. Due to the nature of this business model, subsidising one side of the platform may be necessary, and that explains why operating a news wire service at the core of the company even at a negative margin may be a financially viable business model.

Spaces of Negotiation: Analyzing Platform Power in the News Industry

Digital Journalism, 2023

This article develops an analytical framework to examine the contingent power relations between news organizations and platforms. Eschewing one-sided, monolithic perspectives on platform dominance, we instead theorize power as relational. From this perspective, we observe important variations in news organizations' degree of platform in/dependence. Examining these variations, we propose the concept of spaces of negotiation, which refers to the opportunities available to news organizations to determine how they produce, distribute, and monetize content vis-✓ a-vis platforms. Building on research in journalism studies, platform studies, and related disciplines, we identify three key variables that shape these spaces of negotiation: (1) platform evolution, (2) stage of production, and (3) type of news organization. A systematic analysis of these variables, we contend, allows for a more nuanced, less deterministic understanding of the role of platform companies in transforming the news landscape.

Unraveling Platform Strategies: A Review from an Organizational Ambidexterity Perspective

Platform strategies, which highlight the interdependence in and evolution of business ecosystems, are increasingly relevant for sustainable business models in the digital era. So far, platform research has existed as a fragmented body of insights from different fields, but an integrated theoretical perspective can lead to a more coherent understanding of the research overall. Organizational ambidexterity emphasizes the balance between exploration and exploitation, which is particularly conducive to understanding the sustainability of a firm. Using an organizational ambidexterity perspective, the authors analyze five platform strategies: pricing, openness, integration, differentiation, and envelopment. This paper provides a systematic review of the theoretical and empirical studies in leading management, economics, and information systems journals from 2000 to 2016. The findings show that platform strategies can help platform owners achieve ambidexterity by domain, temporal, and orga...

Platform owners and complementors: the emergence and evolution of platform firms and the performance implications for organizational learning, strategic alliance, and vertical integration behaviors of platform participants

2020

In recent years, platform firms have become an essential component of the business world. With the increasing number of studies, the impacts of platform firms on the traditional business environment are visible in many industry settings. Yet, little attention has been paid to the origin of these organizations. Analyzing 52 publicly available interviews with platform entrepreneurs, managers, and venture capitalists, I explore the emergence of platform firms. In a rigorous grounded theory-building study, I develop a theory and a process model showing how platform firms come into existence over four consecutive stages: (1) Inefficient Markets and Incumbents, (2) Entrepreneurial Motivation and Enabling Factors, (3) Efficiency-Enhancing Means, and (4) Platform Firms. The model illustrates that platform organizations’ impact on the traditional business environment results from developing efficiency-enhancing means. It also highlights the differences between platform firms and traditional ...

Transforming Competitiveness by Introducing Digital Platforms

Journal of World Economy: Transformations & Transitions, 2021

The purpose of the proposed paper is to study the specific factors shaping the benefits of information platforms as an innovative institutional form and model of doing business. Active dissemination of the business model of online platforms radically transforms the competitive landscape of the market environment. The task of determining the sources and mechanisms for studying the changes that are taking place is being updated. New areas of competition include competition between hierarchical and network structures, between global «structuring» platforms, competition in dominant platform ecosystems, the interaction between platforms operating in competitive markets, competition between organizers and users, and between platform users. The impact of platforming on cross-industry, regional and international competition is determined. The sources of competitive advantages of platforms are investigated. These include reliance on data as the main factor of production, changing the cost st...