Time for the Rise of the Platform Mutuals?

Summary

The commoditisation of platforms will stimulate genuine digital innovation

Draw back the curtain of hype from many so-called “digital innovators” such as Uber and you reveal familiar pyramid shaped organisations that share many negative characteristics with the heyday of the railway and oil tycoons. Even claimed innovations such as “dynamic pricing” are merely shallow re-brandings of the economics of the barrow boy – putting up prices when something’s in high demand, reducing prices when it’s not. Yeah, very original. And, just like those earlier tycoons, these new businesses operate in a largely unregulated environment – beneficiaries, for now, of governments’ habitual failure to keep up with the times.