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AbstractThere is currently a fundamental transformation of services, a transformation central to the growth of productivity and competition in the global economy. This transformation, a response to commodification generated by decomposition of production and intensified competition in global markets, is driven by developments in IT tools, the uses they are being put to, and the networks they run on. The service transformation is changing how firms add value, affecting the underlying economic activity in countries around the world.This article introduces the notion of the services transformation, placing it in the historical context of production and competition, noting the advent of the Internet as a critical building block. Second, we consider national strategies for capturing value in this new era. The experiences of Japan and Korea, successful in deploying high‐speed IT networks, but facing unexpected challenges in using them to capture value, highlight several features of the services transformation.

Abstract
Online platforms are pervasive and powerful in today's economy. We explore the increased centrality of platforms in two ways. First, we measure the extent to which platforms are insinuating themselves into the economy. We accomplish this by analyzing the presence of platforms as intermediating organizations across all US service industries at the six-digit North American Industry Classification System code level. Our results show that 70% of service industries, representing over 5.2 million establishments, are potentially affected by one or more platforms. Secondly, we undertake a detailed firm-level case study of the mega-platform, Amazon, which demonstrates the ways that the aforementioned macro-level data is expressed by a single platform firm. This case study shows that Amazon's growth trajectory has resulted in it entering and transforming existing industries and sectors. We conclude by reflecting upon the limitations and implications for future research.

The rise of the platform economy marks the latest phase in the ongoing digital revolution. Indeed, the platform is to this digital era what the factory was to the industrial era, both a symbol and an organizing mechanism. Gernot Grabher and Jonas König (2020) used Karl Polanyi's analysis of what he termed the "great transformation" to frame the rise of platform economy. The platform economy is remarkable as it confirms Polanyi's (and Marx's before him) insight that the reach of the market is based upon increased commodification as it has been able to reach into ever more parts of social life. We introduced the term "platform economy" in 2015 because we recognized that the digital platforms were changing the dynamics of capitalist accumulation – an analysis framed by regulationist school of political economy. The intuition was that the socio-technical innovation of digital online platforms was the critical fulcrum for an economic restructuring that would rewire the flows of data and ultimately money and power. The firms we have termed the "mega-platforms", Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, have become the most valuable and powerful firms in the world. Importantly, the reach of these platforms is global and yet local and personal. Moreover, this platform power has only been reinforced during the COVID-19 pandemic.