AI-Enabled Platforms: Exploring Strategic Value Creation through a Strategy-as-Practice Lens

Platform organizations are pioneering the development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), yet AI poses substantial challenges by disrupting organizational capabilities and threatening competitive advantages. AI reshapes processes and products, influences ecosystem coordination, and foster inter-departmental collaboration. Recognizing its potential, businesses invest heavily in AI, but numerous applications fail to deliver significant value. Surprisingly, even though AI’s influence spans internal and external functions and capabilities, most studies focus on specific contexts and rarely examine the actual business outcomes of AI applications. This paper studies the empirical impact of AI on platform organizations’ value creation. Thus, we adopt a multi-study approach grounded in a Strategy-as-Practice perspective, investigating how AI integration transforms strategic practices. Study 1 draws on currently 45 interviews with platform organizations and develops a holistic framework that classifies AI applications according to their internal and external value creation and focus, enabling us to understand AI’s organizational impact on platform value-creation mechanisms. Study 2 will employ an event-study method and aims to assess the shareholder value impacts of these applications, empirically demonstrating AI’s business value. Preliminary insights from Study 1 indicate that platforms use AI to develop innovation platforms, introduce novel services, optimize ecosystem orchestration, and foster co-creation. By offering a holistic perspective on AI applications and empirically linking practices to shareholder value, this research contributes to both theory and practice. It clarifies how AI can function as a strategic capability within platform organizations, extending our understanding of micro-level strategic practices while guiding managers seeking to realize AI’s potential.