The Platform Playbook for Legacy Titans: Siemens, AXA, ENI & the Digital Phoenix Effect

Anna Noakes Schulze
Jul 15
6 min read

TheNTWK Talks is a monthly online event to explore digital business innovation around platforms, ecosystems, and the circular economy. On June 26, 2025, we welcomed Daniel Trabucchi and Tommaso Buganza for the launch of their new book, The Digital Phoenix Effect, which describes why companies don’t need to be born digital to adapt and thrive with platform thinking. Rather, established companies can leverage their existing assets to build platform solutions that address internal and external business challenges, foster innovation, and create a competitive advantage.

💡Watch the session recording in TheNTWK community: TheNTWK Talks #119

Keynote Presentation: The Digital Phoenix Effect

The session began with a keynote presentation by Daniel Trabucchi and Tommaso Buganza.

Daniel Trabucchi and Tommaso Buganza are professors at the Politecnico di Milano, authors of Platform Thinking, Scientific Directors of the Platform Thinking Hub Observatory, and Co-founders of the Symplatform conference, matching scholars and practitioners. In 2024, Daniel and Tommaso were named to the Thinkers50 Radar list for their influential contributions to management thinking.

During their presentation, Daniel Trabucchi and Tommaso Buganza shared their research on the S&P 500, which found nearly 800 platform initiatives from 484 companies that were not originally founded as platform companies. However, their analysis found 83% of these initiatives were not actual platforms, exposing the broad range of meanings attributed to platforms in a business context. Only 140 of these initiatives (roughly 17%) were true platforms, meaning that they were based on platform business models. Daniel and Tommaso then conducted a deep dive to understand better these 140 true platform cases and the business problems they are solving.

Tommaso Buganza emphasized that platform thinking is not just for startups and born-digital companies. Established companies have significant advantages over startups when building platforms due to existing assets such as industry relationships, customer base, operational know-how, and data. However, most legacy firms tend to integrate platform models into their operations rather than undertake a full platform transformation.

Daniel and Tommaso shared case studies from the book as examples of platform business transformation, including the success stories of Siemens, AXA, and Eni using platform strategies to create value externally (customer-facing) or internally (operations, R&D, new business, etc.):

Industrial powerhouse Siemens extended their core product offerings by launching Siemens Xcelerator as an innovation platform to provide a marketplace of value-added services (platform as a new service).
Global insurance leader AXA developed its Digital Commercial Platform to support its core risk management services while using data from the platform to innovate its product development function (platform to innovate a primary value-chain activity)
Integrated global energy company Eni improved supply chain sustainability by engaging external supply chain partners through its Open-es platform (platform to innovate a support value-chain activity).

Daniel and Tommaso’s research identifies five recurring business problems that platform thinking can solve:

Transaction inefficiencies - transactions between suppliers, partners, or customers are slow, costly, unreliable, etc., leading to lost revenues
Evolving customer demands - rigid business models prevent the company from meeting changing customer needs
Innovation bottlenecks - internal resources and expertise limit the speed of innovation
Underutilized data - vast amounts of data collected but not turned into actionable insights or monetized services
Lack of real-time strategic insights - the company lacks the right data to optimize operations, personalize customer experiences, or drive innovation

The Digital Phoenix Effect covers each of these five business problems in detail, each illustrated with multiple real-world cases. In addition, Daniel and Tommaso have developed a practical 4-step methodology for platform thinking: Framing → Design → Ignition → Growth

Finally, to help companies succeed at understanding and applying platform thinking, the authors have developed:

Platform Thinking Ecosystem, incl. Platform Thinking Hub, books, articles, courses, toolkit, podcast, and events
Platform Thinking Card Set, a PT card game for workshops and team facilitation
Platform Thinking Journey GPT, an AI guide drawing on insights from 140 real-world use cases

💡Access the presentation in TheNTWK community: The Digital Phoenix Effect slide deck

Discussion

During the discussion, a participant asked the authors to differentiate The Digital Phoenix Effect from other platform strategy books. Tommaso Bagano explained that this book focuses specifically on how legacy firms can leverage platform thinking for innovation, in contrast with most platform books that primarily study big tech and startups. He also highlighted that the application of platform models to internal processes within established companies is a new platform strategy topic that has not been extensively explored.

He then discussed the potential of platform thinking to foster internal collaboration within companies, in order to address functional silos and enable knowledge exchange. This involves applying similar mechanisms found in external platforms to internal contexts.

Another participant inquired about how platform thinking could be used to create a platform for after-sales service in an electric vehicle (EV) company in India, connecting dealers and individual auto buyers within a city. The authors pointed out that this scenario mirrors their case study of Kroger's supplier hub platform.

Tommaso Buganza then shared an example from the book about the US pizza chain Domino's. The company created a platform to manage the relationship between franchisees (pizzerias) and customers that allowed them to improve service for the end customer without alienating franchisees.

The authors also mentioned that they have planned a third book at the intersection of platform thinking and Generative AI to simplify the creation of internal platforms within companies. They are currently working on this research and an article centered on Fujitsu's use of GenAI agents to facilitate internal platform development.

Conclusion

Daniel and Tommaso’s research makes clear that the real opportunity for legacy companies doesn’t lie in copying tech unicorns or the latest startup success. It lies in how established organizations can use the assets they have to reimagine where and how they create value. As they wrote in The Digital Phoenix Effect, "Leveraging what they already had, these companies completely bypassed the chicken-and-egg paradox responsible for the infant death of many start-up companies."

Just as identifying underutilized assets and putting them to work is key to platform transformation, so is leveraging partnerships. This means not only reaching out to potential complementors and collaborators, but it may also mean not owning the entire end-to-end customer experience. This entails a shift in companies' understanding of customer centricity from being the best solution provider to "enabling the best solutions to emerge through collaboration, innovation, and the onboarding of new stakeholders."

Digital transformation, as we know, is necessary for legacy companies that want to innovate and remain competitive. But it’s also notoriously difficult to achieve, with failure rates hovering around 70%. So, how can companies beat the odds and start the process of “intelligent regeneration?” Daniel and Tommaso closed the session by offering their three essential success tips for legacy companies beginning a platform transformation:

Embrace customer-centricity
Foster a cultural mindset shift
Prioritize service design to create smooth, value-driven user experiences

⚠️ A new edition of the Platform Thinking Certification will launch in October at the POLIMI Graduate School of Management. Use the code "ntwkplatform" to get a discount. All tools, case studies, and resources are available at platformthinking.eu.

💡Stay tuned for TheNTWK Talks every month as we continue to explore cutting-edge business innovation topics, and join us for a deep dive into platforms, ecosystems, circularity tech, and digital sovereignty at TheNTWK Summit 2026.

What is TheNTWK?

TheNTWK (The Network) is an ecosystem of companies and institutions driving innovation through digital business models, with a special focus on the circular economy. We help you build knowledge, align teams, foster collaboration, and leverage the power of platform ecosystems to create more value for customers and partners. If you are building platforms, connecting ecosystems, or empowering circular solutions, then TheNTWK is your ideal transformation partner.

Want to know more about business model transformation?

TheNTWK Summit 2026 - From Digital Innovation to Digital Sovereignty will take place on May 21-22, 2026, in Barcelona.

TheNTWK Summit is where industry leaders, visionaries, and innovators converge to shape the future of digital business. Join us to explore Europe’s unique approach to innovation through collaborative ecosystems, circular platforms, digital identity, responsible AI, and the transition towards a sovereign tech stack. Join the waitlist. 👀

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