How do digital platform companies earn their money? That is the central question that Nedo Bartels, researcher at EURIDICE partner Fraunhofer-IESE, investigates in his PhD thesis. To this end, Nedo has developed a taxonomy that conceptualizes in a structured fashion the various important dimensions and characteristics of platform revenue models. Nedo’s taxonomy is based on a comprehensive analysis of the existing scientific literature. In addition, the validity of the taxonomy was evaluated through a controlled experiment and applied to a series of practice case studies, so as to identify combinations of platform revenue model types, such as access-based and commission-based models, thereby demonstrating the taxonomy’s ability to model platform revenue models in detail.
Nedo’s taxonomy is valuable not only for analysis but also for business design and evaluation of platform revenue models. His work provides the conceptual foundation for and a scientific underpinning of the practitioner business workshops that Fraunhofer-IESE is organizing in the context a.o. of the EURIDICE project.
Nedo defends his PhD thesis “Conceptualizing Platform Revenue Models: A Taxonomy-Driven Design Approach” on Monday 22 June 2026, 09:45 – 11:15 CEST, at VU Amsterdam. Promotor is Dr. Jaap Gordijn, CEO of EURIDICE partner The Value Engineers (TVE). The PhD defence can be followed also online. For more information and the livestream link see https://vu.nl/en/events/2026/phd-defence-n-a-bartels.
*) The featured picture is AI generated from FhGenie Dall-E and publshed with Fraunhofer IESE blog about the present research on platforms: https://www.iese.fraunhofer.de/blog/simulation-komplexer-software-systeme-nach-spotify-algorithmus/