A roadmap to a shared vision for platforms: The motivations and roles of stakeholders in the transformation from projects to platforms

Abstract

In recent years, ‘platform’ has emerged as a buzzword for business. Despite widespread usage, there remains ambiguity in its meaning. Strategically, platforms capitalize on the advantages of commonality and have been successfully applied across multiple industries to deliver mass-customized products, increasing customer choice while maintaining efficient and effective production methods. It is known that the early involvement of stakeholders enables the platform logic, however that requires redefining their roles and motivations in the platform ecosystem. This paper aims to envisage redefined roles for each stakeholder in the construction value chain to create a shared vision roadmap by understanding their motivations for moving towards a platform ecosystem and how their engagement model will be changed. Four enterprises in Australia, that represent key stakeholders of the construction value chain, were selected for knowledge elicitation through individual discussions. The perspective pitches for the primary stakeholders comprise developers, general and specialized contractors, designers and engineers, while the rest of the value chain is grouped under associated stakeholders. In an attempt to define the new roles for the different stakeholders of the platform ecosystem, there emerged a shared vision that might enable a shift towards the platform approach. The intent for moving value-adding products and services upstream, expanding contribution to the value chain, continuous improvement through data-driven insights, seamless collaboration in a partnering environment and early prototyping were shared across stakeholder groups. A changed nature of engagement was observed where the general contractor ceased to be the single point of engagement with the associated supply chain actors; this role was most likely to be taken up by the developer or the platform consultant. For a longer study, the value chain actors in terms of financiers (upstream) and asset managers (downstream) are required to be included in the value chain and their motivations and roles explored.