Exploring Vulnerabilities and Difficulties in Platform Emergence

The focus of this paper is platform theory, sharing economy, and user-centered design (UCD). Platform theory helps us understand the extensive research in its discourse and provides a stable ground to explore the fragile stage of platform emergence. The sharing economy is a central phenomenon to the studied project which is very important for our global use of future scarce resources. UCD is a central phenomenon where the importance of early involvement of users in the development process of a UCD project. By studying a platform project under development, I present an analytical framework where I identify vulnerabilities and difficulties in platform emergence. The emergence of platforms is an important yet difficult, and vulnerable process, and only a few studies have been conducted exploring this phase. The research question addressed in this thesis is: What are the sources to vulnerabilities and difficulties in the process of platform emergence? Methods of conducting this study are the use of semi-structured interviews of the people involved in the platform project for further flexibility of the questions. The case study project is focused on building a platform that enables users to build their own platforms. The purpose of that project is to enable users to create sharing platforms easier and cheaper. In addition, vulnerabilities and difficulties in platform emergence are explored. The goals of this study are to: 1) understand how a project is performing in this fragile stage of platform emergence, and 2) how to reach the goal where a platform with the underlying themes of platform theory, sharing economy, and user-centered design can be achieved