Future Proof Your Business: Embracing Platform Thinking for Sustainable Growth

Platforms have become a dominant model for value creation, enabling interactions among multiple customer sides and generating indirect cross-side network externalities. While examples such as Airbnb and Uber illustrate their disruptive potential, recent research demonstrates that legacy firms can also leverage platform mechanisms for sustainable growth by activating existing assets, relationships, and data. Building on prior work, we distinguish three archetypes—transactional, innovation, and orthogonal platforms—and show how Platform Thinking can address five recurrent business problems in established organizations, including missing transactions and innovation bottlenecks. The Digital Phoenix Effect describes how incumbents ignite dormant potential rather than disrupt their core. Cases such as Siemens, AXA, and Eni illustrate this phenomenon. Looking ahead, Generative AI acts as a catalyst for internal platforms, accelerating knowledge exchange and co-creation, as exemplified by the Fujitsu case. Together, platforms and GenAI offer a strategic pathway for legacy firms to remain competitive, resilient, and future-proof.