Digital Battlegrounds

Overview

This paper develops a comprehensive framework for understanding the power dynamics and governance structures of contemporary digital platforms. Published in the Academy of Management Annals, it synthesizes and extends the fragmented literature on platform governance to reveal how platforms function not as neutral marketplaces but as contested spaces — digital battlegrounds — where platform owners, complementors, users, and regulators vie for control over the rules, norms, and architectures that shape participation and value capture.

Contribution to the Research Program

Digital platforms are the infrastructure upon which much of contemporary entrepreneurship occurs, making platform governance a foundational concern for the Cyborg Entrepreneurship program. This paper establishes the structural context for understanding how AI-mediated platforms shape entrepreneurial opportunity — who gets access, whose innovations get surfaced, and whose value gets captured. It connects to the Methods & Infrastructure stream by mapping the institutional architecture of the digital economy, and to the AI & Deep Tech Entrepreneurship stream by revealing how platform governance decisions increasingly rely on algorithmic systems whose power dynamics are opaque to the entrepreneurs who depend on them.

Key Insights

• Platforms are best understood as contested governance structures, not neutral market intermediaries
• Power asymmetries are encoded in platform architecture, algorithms, and terms of service
• The relationship between platform owners and complementors (including entrepreneurs) is fundamentally one of asymmetric governance
• Understanding platform power dynamics is essential for any theory of entrepreneurship in the digital economy