Why Digital Platforms by Incumbents Fail: Results from a Delphi Study

Abstract

In an economy increasingly dominated by digital platforms, incumbent firms are trying to launch platforms associated with their original products in an attempt to remain relevant and create additional value propositions. Yet, evidence shows that digital platform design from within a non-digital product company is not straightforward and many failures have been observed. As previous research is scarce to explain the root causes of this lack of platform success, we conducted a Delphi study with global experts in the automotive industry to identify those factors that can explain why these incumbents are failing with their digital platform initiatives. We identified six categories that complement the established body of knowledge on failure factors with digital platforms. Based on that, we suggest an integrative framework to explain typical failures in digital platforms by incumbents.