The platform economy and futures of market societies: Salient tensions in ecosystem evolution

• Digital platform ecosystems lead the continued march into market society. • Four salient tensions at moderate levels drive ecosystem evolution and generativity. • Altered socio-cultural interaction and dependencies affect future shaping of markets. The so-called platform economy is currently one of the most popular abstractions in business research, often seen as acting as a bellwether for the continued march into market society. Yet, there is a need to better understand the evolution and co-constitutive character of platform ecosystem actor relations and their effects on the development of innovation, markets and society. We focus on the conditions under which these ecosystems evolve and, in particular, the effects of four identified salient tensions (labelled “collaboration and competition”, “periphery and core”, “value creation and value capture”, and “global and local”) on ecosystem generativity. Our analysis applies a socio-technical perspective that emphasizes the role of moderate tension levels in intra-and inter-platform ecosystem social interaction as drivers of evolution, which can sustain further development of innovations and shaping of markets. We discuss risks of tension levels rising or dwindling excessively due to processes of market concentration, collusion and quasi-monopolization, excessive focus on control and value capture, and heightened geopolitical frictions, against which the platform economy is by no means immune. As the evolution of platform ecosystems is intimately interwoven with our understanding of markets, we deliberate over how recently altered socio-cultural interactions and dependencies may affect the future of market societies.