Industry platforms as a specific type of company

The digitalization of the economy has led to the emergence and rapid development of platform companies (or platforms), which have changed the global business landscape, pushing oil and gas companies from the top lines of the world rankings and showing high rates of economic growth. New approaches and tools for the development of platform companies are of interest to researchers and practitioners, but the phenomenon of platforms remains poorly explored, and the diversity of views and terms still remains. The authors studied the domestic and foreign experience and presented three main approaches to determining the platform, one of which operates at the company level, and the other two are more generalized, going beyond the company's borders and considering platforms as new business structures of the digital economy. However, the systematization of the results of studies of various scientific directions and theories concerning the issues of the functioning of platform companies has shown that it remains a debatable question whether platform companies are a single category or whether there are different fundamental types of platform companies within this category. Sharing the second point of view, the authors distinguish two main types of platform companies: market aggregator platforms and industry platforms, focusing on the study of industry platforms. The purpose of the article is to define and systematically describe the phenomenon of industry platforms as a new specific type of company. In the course of the study, the authors implemented the systematization of theoretical and methodological approaches to the definition and classification of platform companies and identified general for all platforms and specific to industry platforms features that determine the problems of the formation and functioning of such platforms. The proposed approach contributes to the formation of new ideas and views on the organization and functioning of industry platforms and the platform business ecosystems formed on their basis

Keywords: platforms, platform classification, features of industry platforms, platform companies «2GIS» and «1C», platform ecosystem

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