Grand challenges and platform ecosystems: Scaling solutions for wicked ecological and societal problems

Abstract

The persistence of grand societal and environmental challenges demands attention from innovation management scholars and practitioners to find effective resolutions. Grand challenges are complex, uncertain, and evaluative and cannot be resolved by individual actors or organizations. Therefore, conventional forms of organizing do not suffice in the face of wicked problems like climate change or global inequality, which require continuous and varied attention and inputs. In this catalyst article, I argue that platform ecosystems—communities and groups of actors in different markets orchestrated through a digital platform and driven by combinations of economic and prosocial incentives—are an organizing form that can help effectively scale solutions for grand societal and environmental problems. This potential is based on three organizational elements of platform ecosystems: (1) coordination structures for orchestrating complementary inputs, (2) instigation and maintenance of collective action, and (3) generativity potential. I illustrate these arguments with practical examples of two platforms with the potential to resolve specific grand challenges: Patient Innovation, which orchestrates a community of innovators seeking to help treatment of chronic and rare diseases, and Excess Materials Exchange, which provides matching solutions to address the challenges associated with industrial material waste. The article concludes with an agenda for future research and practice on platform ecosystems and grand challenges.