Is Platform Capitalism Socially Sustainable?

More in particular, we’ll focus on, firstly, on the digital platform as a radical organisational innovation. Digital platform represents a structural novelty in the market economy and indices a new organization of production and labour. Secondly, we’ll analyse the role played by platform in directly creating value, through the introduction of the concept of “network value”. To this aim, we’ll describe the function of “business intelligence” (Davemport, 2014) as a new strategic and competitive business tool. Finally, we discuss the main problematic nodes that characterise platform capitalism, which could make it socially unsustainable and a source of further economic and financial instability: the increasing commodification of everyday acts, the devaluation of paid labour in favour of forms of free production thanks to the increasing involvement of platform users (the so-called prosumers), and the creation of proprietary and financial monopolies.