Platform Digest — 21.07

👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week's remarkable stories at the intersection of #ecosystem #innovation and #platform #organisation.

Why I'm so Hyped about the Passion Economy:

Human passion is truly universal, and the internet is the ultimate tool to unlock the power of human creativity on a scale that is hard to comprehend. In this respect, I believe that we're still in the very early stages of discovering all of the second & third order effects that the internet will have on humanity ... It's an exciting time to be alive.

👊 "Passion First, Economy Second"—TransitiveBullsh.it

The Beginning of the End:

As restaurants partner with these new entrants to optimize their businesses, the goal isn’t to kill third party platforms, but to put them in their right place and use them for what they were intended: attracting new customers on the restaurant's terms. The impact of course will put strain on their already bad economics.

🤓 Platform positioning is the Alpha and the Omega—Not Boring

From Shopify to Unity: The picks and shovels of the new gold rush

Aggregators drove stock market gains through the 2010s. I’m willing to bet that infrastructures - Unity, Shopify, Adobe, Agora, Stripe, Twilio, Microsoft, AWS, and others - will drive these gains through the 2020s. The digital transformation gold rush hit mainstream with Covid-19 but shovel sellers are still only starting to scale up.

🙏 To have skin in the Passion Economy—Sangeet Paul Choudary

🧐 Adding to Sangeet's article: the role of infrastructures in the overall platform economy feels under-appreciated at times. Yes, 'picks and shovels' doesn't quite have the ring of 'AirBnB for X' but represents real value and proper defensibility. The below visual helped us in discussing organisations' position in this context (adapted from this seminal piece):

👷🏻‍♀️👷🏻‍♂️Our Work

We will be releasing a complete toolbox for the citizen designers of the creator economy. Here's a brief overview of the rationale and what's in store—Youtube

📬 Suggestions?

Please, feel free to send tips and ideas for a next digest by replying to this post. Or, send them directly to hello@futuring-architectures.com 🙏