Beyond Uber: The platformization and assetization of industrial production

20th SCANCOR Workshop on Institutional Analysis, University of Hamburg, 26–30 August 2024

This talk challenges the epistemological privilege of the sphere of consumption in research on digital platforms. By shifting focus to the domain of industrial production, attention moves from construing platforms as crisp categories to understanding the messy processes of platformization. And rather than simply adding a further category to the market-hierarchy-network trinity, the focus on platformization foregrounds a shift from the logic of commodification to practices of assetization. The business models of major manufacturers, as the example of John Deere shall elucidate, are no longer confined to selling (agricultural) equipment, but crucially involve the transformation of (agricultural) data into lucrative future income streams.