The future of work will be defined by platforms, or so it seems with the “success” stories of the Ubers,  Airbnbs and Taskrabbits developed in a wide range of sectors.

A simple way of defining platforms is that of organizations that connect people, knowledge, and opportunities. These organizations not only minimize resources by sharing them among its users; but the most well-known examples of the so-called “sharing economy” also take the resources of these same users (expertise, time, homes, cars…) and co-opt it as their own supply giving them very little to no power to decide, imposing conditions and preventing contributors from the right of social protection and labor-derived rights we have been enjoying in the past decades.

As the beginning of this post states, most of us will soon no longer work for an employer, but for a series of platforms: “Work” as we know it is disappearing, and we will have the privilege and the challenge to organize our work “flexibly” around gigs.  The estimations predict around 540 M people working in the “gig economy” by 2025, that’s around 15% of the current total global workforce. ²

Can platforms be positive?

Is there any way in which we can build new welfare structures to cover the classic labor-associated benefits or even go beyond these?

How can we turn into positive this new work paradigm that technology is enabling and propelling at a much larger speed than regulations can (or want to) adapt to?

These and many other questions are discussed in the research of the  IFTF  revolving around the topic of positive platforms: “Positive Platforms are systems for on-demand work that not only maximize profits for their owners but also provide dignified and sustainable livelihoods for those who work on them”. ³F

Under this umbrella we developed our research on “Designing positive platforms: a guide for a governance-based approach”.

Positive by design

Our approach is on the design of the governance of the platform, so that the matters of shared power and welfare are dealt with directly and intrinsically, by design.

After studying fifteen examples of platforms (chosen after the criteria of size, scalability, years of existence and shared-value in the network), the research lead us to the following five principles for the design of governance:

The relevant part of the paper, however, is to spur a thorough discussion on certain key elements and come out with customized mechanisms and solutions for each particular platform. This is the case around for “Recognition of the generated value” and  “Welfare”. These two principles trigger a crucial discussion both on the resilience of the platform and what that organization stands for ideologically.

Defining value:  What do we stand for?

The complexity of value lies on its intangibility and its very broad nature ⁴:  value is an individual perception, and, therefore, not really measurable ⁵.  In platforms we talk about generated value: the user’s contribution to the platform. And distributed value: what the user receives from the platform in the form of benefits (because of her contribution).

Probably, no two members of the same platform will perceive value in the same way: this link leads to a mindmap that illustrates the main dimensions of value and gives a quick idea on the complexity of this issue.

The contributors of a platform are, ideally, bound by a common definition of “Values and principles”. Therefore, there will probably be some similarity on what is considered to be “a value-contribution” and a “benefit” received for it. Nevertheless, it remains a challenging process that arises many key-questions:

• Is value (types of contributions) pre-defined by the platform or is left to each individual member to decide?
• What is considered as a value-contribution:   do we use a resource-based logic? (eg: time, expertise, amount of contribution, etc)  or an efficacy-based one? (eg: related to the goal that wanted to be achieved), can we think of other criteria? How do we value “soft” (intangible) contributions like a member “creating a good atmsophere”, or  “being available for others”, or “facilitating collaborative work”, etc?
• What are the benefits that the contributors receive? How is the process of value distribution made transparently?
• What mechanism should be designed to trace and balance value contributions and benefits received?

Creating solutions for welfare: mutualism.

Welfare is one of the main challenges of the gig-economy: in a professional world dominated by platforms that are not employers and with laws that are not adapted to this new reality – leaving continuously more people out of a minimum labor-benefit system – how can platforms be designed to cover these growing needs?

The only possibility is to take welfare in the governance system:  welfare is distributed value (benefit) generated through contributions.

To go on with this discussion, it is necessary to have previously defined what value-contributions are for the platform and the benefits to be received for those;  welfare might (should) be one of those benefits.

Different types of mutualism provide an answer to the need to cover welfare internally.

It’s important to take into account that welfare is understood in a broader sense than labor-benefits including the psychological / social welfare we get by being a part of a community, for example.

Mutualism can be understood as sharing a co-working space, sharing knowledge, pooling any type of resource, even income. Such is the case of Enspiral’s “Livelihood pods” in which income is pooled to provide all members with a stable income and labor benefits throughout the year.

By now, the more trust there is in a community, the more that can be mutualized; unfortunately, this sets huge barriers to scalability in such sensitive matters of sharing resources.  But there is still  an open door: could technological innovation in-hand with social innovation and shared governance models lead to scaled trust? This would allow for larger communities to become more resilient pooling more resources to build their own system within the current global one that threatens the welfare of millions of workers worldwide.

There are more aspects to each principle to be found with numerous examples in the complete research. We invite you to read it and join the conversation on solutions to the gig-economy and to further develop the principles themselves.

We would also like to point out that, while sharing the content of our paper we have heard quite often that it is ideal for initiators / new organizations like platform coops, networks and other hybrids that might be starting out. Paradoxically though, we find that there is a burning need to work on the resilience of many of the already existing platform coops, networks and hybrids. These organizations are for sure facing other challenges such as financiation and technical development; nevertheless, caring for welfare is key for the resilience of the community undertaking the project. Even more important and more challenging for organizations that envision and work for a new system, but have to survive in the current one while being as coherent as possible with that vision.

Governance is the heart of an organization, it should hold and irradiate the common agreement that the members of that organization have gotten to. For that end, governance design and addressing key issues such as “value and welfare” are a “must” so that platforms geared towards the common good and that want to impact positively the future of work can achieve their vision.

^{1. [Chase, Robin (2015) https://wtfeconomy.com/everything-that-can-become-a-platform-will-become-a-platform-216bcfb89855 ]}

^{2. [https://datos.bancomundial.org/indicador/SL.TLF.TOTL.IN ]}

^{3. [https://medium.com/institute-for-the-future/hacking-the-future-of-work-69454b344eb9 ]}

^{4. [Proportioned to us by Ben]}

^{5. [Sensorica]}

Photo by szwerink

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One trend in business models is platforms. Airbnb and Uber built extractive platforms on top of the sharing movement. But online platforms do not have to evil.

The Platform Design Toolkit released it’s 2.0 version this year.  Despite it’s marketing hype concerning brands and industry shaping, the toolkit is released under a Creative Common license. One of its commons oriented aims is to create additional value within an ecosystem by generating ecosystem knowledge.

In fact, this is the essence of conferences, like the one I attended.  The event (a platform) assembles practitioners, theorists, regulators, and entrepreneurs (an ecosystem) to interact and exchange ideas (knowledge generation).

Extracted from: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/your-organization-too-can-be-a-platform-8d0668e55cb#.9vueudhbk

Platform Design Thinking is a totally new way to look at your organization going beyond traditionally imposed barriers on what a business or organization should be. Approaching organization design with a fresh mindset on what a modern organization can leverage on will help us reflect on its physical, structural and sometimes legal boundaries. This conversation is key to designing revolutionary value propositions and organization like creation spaces, that aim to be great for people, instead of big for shareholders.

Extracted from: http://platformdesigntoolkit.com/

Who is the Platform Design Toolkit for?

Corporate pioneers that want to shape reference markets, startup founders that want to disrupt incumbents, social entrepreneurs that want to achieve high impact.

Consultants that want to help clients, journalists and analysts that want to understand how platforms work: the toolkit is also a premium analysis tool.

As we’ve seen in many occasions while developing and explaining the Platform Design Toolkit, there are two key aspects of being a company-platform.

First, you need to ensure you build the right channels and contexts that make it possible for the transactions and relationships that exist in your ecosystem to happen smoothly and flawlessly.

The second key aspect is to see your organization as a powerful engine of learning. Provide means for performance improvement that can benefit not only the company shareholders but the ecosystem as a whole.

Extracted from: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/platforms-are-engines-of-learning-4f7b70249177#.2i98pvxcl

The topic of Positive Platforms is of course on our radar since a while. We’ve been keeping an eye on every relevant analysis and, in a few months old post, Marina Gorbis and Devin Fidler from Silicon Valley based Institute For The Future, identified eight principles of Positive Platforms design. All the points raised in the post are key and interesting, ranging from open access and transparency to democratic governance and more, and we took all of them into account in developing a new version of the Platform Schema that we will soon publish. By the way, among these principles, you will find one that we think is obviously key, that of “Upskilling”:

“The best platforms already show those who work on them pathways for learning […] and connect people to resources for advancement”

Extracted from: http://us11.campaign-archive1.com/?%20u=e272a9d50c52efb331777c60a&id=5dbfee3a1e

Earlier on in July the team held a company workshop with one of the primary financial institutions in Europe. We’ve learnt how human capital in knowledge intensive industries can help these companies become platforms, capable of multiplying the value for the customer through the facilitation of the ecosystem interaction: experts can successfully play the role of trusted advisers for customers.

The greatest learning we achieved was that Platforms help these brands climb the value chain and provide customers with higher level services by leveraging the expertise in the ecosystem and the convergence of strategies between several customers, helping them connect around more ambitious plans and projects.

Extracted from: http://us11.campaign-archive1.com/?u=e272a9d50c52efb331777c60a&id=d19099239a

Blockchains & Platforms: shaping the future of Insurance and Liabilities

The future of the insurance will therefore be on one side unbundled and commoditized?—?with trading of standardized risk and high-speed on Blockchain?—?and on the other will be a key process to give the brand a chance to take responsibility for complex and dynamic business processes that they will create by combining components as the DAO, smart contracts, distributed resources and open-source data: that “general intellect” that?—?despite the destructive force?—?can not be held legally responsible.

In a nutshell, Platforms (not only in the insurance industry) will increasingly take advantage of distributed tools and resources to build their business processes. These processes will be made of activities and information that are not owned by the brand itself, but of which the brand will be accountable for towards the user and the law; in doing so, the ability to calculate the overall risk of such complex combinations, will be an essential factor in determining the success of tomorrow’s brands and companies.

Photo by -Jeffrey-

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