Moritz Maier began his PhD as a platform enthusiast. Three years on, his view of digital platforms has become more sober, but he has not lost hope. “Digital platforms have the potential to solve the greatest challenges of our time – climate change, poverty, social inequality. But they can also cause great harm to our democracies and to us as individuals,” he says in the video.
Maier is one of the first members of the DFG Research Training Group 2720 “Digital Platform Ecosystems” at the University of Passau. It examines digital platforms from an interdisciplinary perspective – not only from a technological angle, but also with regard to business models and the personalities behind them. Not only in Europe and the US, but also in the Global South.
Maier recently submitted his doctoral thesis. It reflects the diversity of research within the Research Training Group. In his three essays, he explores different themes and methodological approaches. The title “Don’t You (Forget about me)” hints at the overarching theme. The three essays pursue the same line of thought: digital platform ecosystems are not purely technical constructs, but social entities shaped by the people who build and manage them. “Anyone who overlooks these actors cannot explain why platforms grow, nor why some ecosystems concentrate power, nor why some companies are more successful than others,” says Maier.
Field research in Kenya. As part of an interdisciplinary, international research team – with members from Europe and Africa and in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the World Bank – the team is using a qualitative multiple-case study of three agricultural platforms to investigate how entrepreneurs in the Global South build digital platforms. One finding: “What we know about platforms in the US or Europe cannot simply be transferred to the Global South. It doesn’t work that way there,” explains Maier. For farmers in Kenya to use digital platforms at all, locally rooted human intermediaries are needed – the team refers to them as “agents” who, acting as “human platforms”, build trust and translate the technology into the local context.
CEOs and narcissism. In research, technical aspects often dominate when it comes to platforms, presumably because they are more tangible. Yet platforms do not operate in a vacuum. “If you want to understand the development of digital platforms, you have to look at the people behind them,” explains Maier. In a conceptual paper, the team of authors examines narcissism among CEOs, drawing on insights from psychology, sociology and top management research. The finding: the effect is two-sided. A certain degree of narcissism can increase the value created by a platform ecosystem – too much of it has the opposite effect, because power becomes concentrated around a small, privileged group of partners. The team thus demonstrates that the personality of individual executives shapes not only their own company, but an entire ecosystem.
Relational versus transactional. In the third article, Maier and his team of authors take a quantitative approach. They analyse the language used in the annual reports of around 500 large listed US companies to determine how their top management teams think – whether they are more relational or more transactional. Terms such as ‘co-create’, ‘ecosystem partner’ or ‘open source’ point to a relational cognitive orientation: a willingness to collaborate with others and create value together. In a second step, the team examines how this relates to corporate success. On average, a correlation emerges: a more transactional, rather insular orientation among management teams tends to be associated with greater corporate success – a statistical correlation, not a causal automatism. “Existing research recommends that managers become more open and collaborative. We have learnt that it is also important to protect one’s own data and secure a slice of the pie – not just to focus on joint value creation,” says Maier. Initial, as yet preliminary indications also suggest that ultimately it is not a question of one or the other, but of both at the same time: management teams that combine shared value creation with securing their own share could fare better in ecosystem competition.
The thesis supervisor is Professor Andreas König, spokesperson for the Research Training Group and holder of the Chair of Strategic Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship; the second reviewer is Professor Carolin Häussler, holder of the Chair of Organisation, Technology Management and Entrepreneurship and project leader within the Research Training Group. The co-authors of the academic articles come partly from other disciplines and the international network of the Research Training Group, including Mercator Fellows Professor Don Lange and Professor Tim Quigley. Maier worked closely with DPE alumna Anastasiya Shylina. During his research in Kenya, he benefited from exchanges with DPE fellow Sally Boyani Mokaya. Their research topics differ – yet as a Kenyan, she understands the hurdles that determine the success or failure of digital platforms in her home country.
Maier, who started out as a platform enthusiast, has become a researcher who understands the ambivalence involved. He hasn’t lost his drive, but he has become more reflective. “My PhD taught me to delve deeply into a topic and stick with it, even when it gets difficult,” he says.
Now, research is giving way to practice. Together with others, Maier is currently in the process of founding a start-up: a digital platform that brings together providers of modular housing systems with initiators of housing projects. Underpinning this is an idea that runs through Maier’s work – in research as well as in practice: using a platform-based approach to drive innovations that create social value. Here, the focus is on tackling the housing crisis.
This text was machine-translated from German.
On 15 and 16 June 2026, the DFG Research Training Group 2720 “Digital Platform Ecosystems” (DPE) is hosting the international conference “DPE Forum”. Under the theme “Critical Perspectives on Digital Platform Ecosystems: Governance, Influence and Consequences”, experts is discussing pressing issues in the platform economy with doctoral students and postdocs – ranging from unresolved questions of power and global regulatory strategies to the impact on children and young people.
