Digital Platform Strategies and Profitability—The Role of Strategy Type and Chief Digital Officers

Yongli Huang (), Maximilian Schreieck (), Yiwen Gao () and Jason B. Thatcher ()
Additional contact information
Yongli Huang: Universität Innsbruck, Department of Information Systems, Production and Logistics Management
Maximilian Schreieck: Universität Innsbruck, Department of Information Systems, Production and Logistics Management
Yiwen Gao: Clemson University, Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business
Jason B. Thatcher: University of Colorado Boulder, Leeds School of Business

A chapter in Digital Innovation and Organizational Transformation, 2026, pp 171-188 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract While companies in the IT industry—particularly the big tech companies—have profited from digital platform strategies, whether companies across industries al-so benefit from such strategies remains contested. Focusing on the S&P1500 companies, we show that digital platform strategies positively affect a company’s profitability, albeit after a lag of several years. To further explore the relationship between digital platform strategies and profitability, we considered the impact of the type of digital platform strategy and the presence of a chief digital officer (CDO). First, the positive effect of a digital platform strategy is stronger for companies that implement the digital platform organically (“build strategy”) rather than for companies that acquire a platform (“buy strategy”). Second, the presence of a CDO positively moderates the effect of digital platform strategy in the long but not in the short run. Overall, implementing digital platforms is not a quick-win strategy for companies, but it requires careful consideration.

Keywords: Digital platforms; Platform strategy; Chief digital officer; Digital upper echelon (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:lnichp:978-3-032-08483-5_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783032084835

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-08483-5_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organization from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().