**9. Platform ecosystem**

A platform system consists of a core, its complements, and the interfaces between them [2]. The new companies are made of powerful platform ecosystem uniquely able to attract, match, and connect people to enable them to transact. These platforms often use open business model that do not require keeping or manufacturing anything, but harness the power of communities to enable transaction. This is different from traditional organizations which tend to run as linear [1].

Platform-based ecosystems are a vital source of dynamism and innovation for many technologies, products, and services in the global economy. A defining feature of platform ecosystems is the interdependency between a stable core or a "platform" that interfaces with a dynamic and heterogeneous set of complementary components to generate a stream of derivative products. Platforms spur innovation and efficiency in diverse sectors such as computers, video games, mobile phones, automobiles, payment systems, and e-commerce. Platforms' successes require coordination and integration across organizational units and firms that often have conflicting interests and requirements.

Platforms raise interesting and complex issues that strategic management scholars are exclusively equipped to address. At the same time, platforms offer new kinds of contexts for strategy scholars to reexamine existing theories of organization, cooperation, competition, and decision making. Platform owners must consider their own competences, technologies, and processes as well as those of their suppliers and rivals to design for modularity and interoperability. Meanwhile, the strategies of platform participants influence how they contribute value to the platform ecosystem and how much of that value they will be able to appropriate. Consequently, managers must understand the nature of competition and collaboration in platform-based ecosystems. Such a strategic decision making goes beyond issues such as critical mass, switching costs, compatibility, and network effects and encompasses a broader set of social, cognitive, and technical aspects. Hakansson et al. (see [22]) support this framework by suggesting that a network analysis of business evolution takes into account resources and web of actors.

Platforms create new connections and new opportunities for trade, but also there have been concerns of its dominance on competition [23–25]. Being a savvy, successful participant may offer a path to profit without the enormous risk of managing the platform itself, if you are willing to cede the glory in favor of growth and stability [24]. In addition, there is the issue of governance of the platform ecosystem, which considers who has access to platform, how to divide value between ecosystem members, and how to resolve conflicts or manage sometimes increasingly different objective [26]. The goal is to arrange complementors and consumer rules to create and sustain vibrant ecosystems. Policies must ensure value creation and also highquality participation on platform. At the same time, the right mix of incentives is required to encourage joining and good behavior. Platform ecosystems are thus gaining ground through the digitalization of products, services, and business processes in the process of shaping the global landscape.
