The octopus effect: when and who platform companies acquire

After their launch, Amazon, Apple, Airbnb, and Google, giant platforms of the digital economy, all followed a similar pattern. They quickly bought competing platform companies in their same market niche before growing tentacles through acquisitions in other sectors. Margherita Pagani, Milan Miric, and Omar El Sawy call this phenomenon “octopus effect” and wonder what the next evolutionary stage of platforms will be.