This document summarizes a journal article about using platform ecosystems to address grand challenges and wicked problems. It defines grand challenges as critical barriers that, if removed, could help solve important social issues. Wicked problems are ill-defined issues involving multiple stakeholders. The document then provides examples of plastic waste and public health as grand challenges. It describes characteristics of grand challenges and strategies like participatory architecture that can help address them. Finally, it discusses how platform ecosystems can coordinate contributions, instigate collective action, and enable generativity to help resolve grand challenges through distributed experimentation at a large scale.

1. GRAND CHALLENGES AND PLATFORM ECOSYSTEMS:
Scaling solutions for wicked ecological and social problems
Published in Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2023
Paavo Ritala
Professor of Strategy & Innovation
LUT Business School, Finland
ritala@lut.fi
Open access link to the paper:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jpim.12682

2. GRAND CHALLENGES
Specific critical barrier(s) that, if removed, would
help solve an important social problem with a high
likelihood of global impact through widespread
implementation
(George et al., 2016)

3. WICKED PROBLEMS
Poorly formulated, boundary-spanning, ill-
structured issues involving multiple stakeholders
with differing perspectives, time horizons, and
normative perceptions
(Waddock et al., 2015)

4. CASE PLASTIC WASTE
Year after year, plastic recycling declines even
as plastic waste increases
In the USA, plastic recycling was estimated to have declined
to about 5–6% in 2021, down from a high of 9.5% in 2014 and
8.7% in 2018.*
According to recent estimates from the OECD,
plastic waste is on course to triple by 2060.
Two thirds of this is expected to be made up of packaging,
consumer products and textiles. Plastic waste from
construction and transport will also be significant.
* https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/new-greenpeace-report-plastic-recycling-is-a-dead-end-
street-year-after-year-plastic-recycling-declines-even-as-plastic-waste-increases/

5. CASE PUBLIC HEALTH
According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), up to 3.5 billion people – almost half the
world’s population – lack access to the health
services they need, with almost 100 million
people being pushed to extreme poverty each
year because of out-of-pocket expenses*
Primary health services are a fundamental
element of universal health care, yet research
warns that, if current trends continue, up to
5 billion people are unable to access health care
in 2030**
* Tracking Universal Health Coverage: 2017 Global Monitoring Report, World Bank, WHO. 2017
** https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/universalhealthcoverage

6. CHARACTERISTICS OF GRAND CHALLENGES
(BASED ON FERRARO ET AL., 2015)
Complex: The problems are characterized
by many interactions and associations, and
nonlinear dynamics.
Uncertain: The problems and their
evolution are difficult to forecast for the
actors, who cannot properly identify
possible future states of the world.
Evaluative: The problems cut across
jurisdictional boundaries, implicate multiple
criteria of worth, and can reveal new
concerns even as they are being tackled.

7. ROBUST ACTION STRATEGIES
(BASED ON FERRARO ET AL., 2015)
Generic definition: Short-term actions that serve a longer-term mission,
without overcommitting into one path or direction.
Participatory architecture:
A structure and rules of
engagement that allow diverse
and heterogeneous actors to
interact constructively over
prolonged timespans.
Example: Global Reporting
Initiative (GRI)
Multivocal inscription:
Discursive and material activity that
sustains different interpretations
among various audiences with
different evaluative criteria, in a
manner that promotes coordination
without requiring explicit
consensus.
Example: United Nations
Principles for Responsible
Investing (PRI)
Distributed experimentation:
Iterative action that generates
small wins, promotes evolutionary
learning, and increases
engagement, while allowing
unsuccessful efforts to be
abandoned.
Example: Greenhouse gas
reduction initiatives

8. RESOLVING GRAND
CHALLENGES WITH
PLATFORM
ECOSYSTEMS?

9. EXHIBIT 1:
EXCESS MATERIALS EXCHANGE

10. EXHIBIT 2:
PATIENT INNOVATION

11. EXHIBIT 3:
HACKERONE

12. COMMON CHARACTERISTICS OF PLATFORM ECOSYSTEMS
THAT ENABLE GRAND CHALLENGE RESOLUTION
Coordination structures for orchestrating complementary inputs
▪ Platform ecosystems are loosely coupled systems → an effective coordination structure is
needed to match supply and demand, users and providers, or problems with solutions, etc
▪ Ideally, the coordination structure minimizes transaction costs, sets rules for exchange, and
mitigates opportunism and relational hazards
Instigation and maintenance of collective action
▪ Ecosystems are arenas for collective action where they benefit from ongoing inputs and efforts
by different ecosystem actors that rally behind a joint purpose or value proposition (Thomas &
Ritala, 2022)
Generativity potential
▪ Generativity: unprompted and combinatorial innovation that emerges in platform ecosystems
(Thomas & Tee, 2022)
▪ For grand challenge resolution, generativity is important for providing continuous and distributed
innovation and experimentation towards local and global solutions

13. FRAMEWORK: ORGANIZATIONAL DIMENSIONS PLATFORM
ECOSYSTEMS FOR GRAND CHALLENGE RESOLUTION
Organizational
dimension
Key benefits of platform ecosystems Key organizing problems
Coordination
structures for
orchestrating
complementary
inputs
• Participatory architecture: Joint
interfaces, standards & practices for
joining and leaving; Incentives & rules for
engagement
• Platform core: How to design technical and
functional platform interfaces
• Matching and brokering: What are the rules
of engaging with complementors
• Value creation and capture architercure:
Incentives, inputs, sharing of benefits
Instigation and
maintenance of
collective action
• Distributed experimentation: Social
movement –type processes with diversity
of actors
• Multivocal inscription: System-level
goal, yet allowing individual approaches
• Chicken-and-egg problem: Market creation
initially, ramping up network effects
• Collective action problems: How to mitigate
freeriding and opportunism
Generativity
potential
• Distributed experimentation: New
solutions emerge without hierarchical
oversight of the platform orchestrator
• Multivocal inscription: Unprompted
innovation without ex ante limitations
(beyond the basic platform rules)
• Balancing openness and control: How to
enable variety/innovation and
quality/coherence at the same time
• Maintaining traction: How to ensure an
ongoing flow of innovative and varied inputs
over time

14. IMPLICATION 1:
SCALING GRAND CHALLENGE RESOLUTION WITH PLATFORMS
Scaling is critical to address grand challenges and wicked problems
However, scaling is easier with clearly scoped problems with linear
(or exponential) improvement curves. That is – with economies of
scale!
With global grand challenges, absent of clear supranational and
strongly enforced legislation, scaling of solutions might need to be
more distributed, involve a broader participatory architectures, and
allow for local experimentation.
Platform ecosystem governance design can ideally accommodate
these scaling principles via provision of a coordination structure

15. IMPLICATION 2:
DEALING WITH MULTIPLE LOGICS IN PLATFORM ECOSYSTEMS
Platform ecosystems have been primarily been characterized by being
driven by economic logics and network effects
However, more often than not, users and participants of platform
ecosystems possess also prosocial motivations, hold various normative
expectations and values, and provide voluntary inputs
Platform governance can be designed to accommodate these logics
▪ Can prosocial motivations be aligned with economic ones?
▪ Different platform participant groups might subscribe to different logics
▪ Transparent governance rules to involve those logics is key
Ideally, platform ecosystems can maintain both collective action and
generativity that drive continuous experimentation and (incentivized and/or
voluntary) inputs

16. REFERENCES USED IN THIS PRESENTATION
➢ Ferraro, F., Etzion, D., & Gehman, J. (2015). Tackling grand challenges pragmatically: Robust action revisited.
Organization Studies, 36(3), 363-390.
➢ Waddock, S., Meszoely, G. M., Waddell, S., & Dentoni, D. (2015). The complexity of wicked problems in large scale
change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(6), 993-1012.
➢ George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016). Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges
through management research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 1880-1895.
➢ Thomas, L. D., & Ritala, P. (2022). Ecosystem legitimacy emergence: A collective action view. Journal of Management,
48(3), 515-541.
➢ Thomas, L. D., & Tee, R. (2022). Generativity: A systematic review and conceptual framework. International Journal of
Management Reviews, 24(2), 255-278.
OTHER RELATED READING
➢ Cennamo, C., Oliveira, P., & Zejnilovic, L. (2022). Unlocking Innovation in Healthcare: The Case of the Patient
Innovation Platform. California Management Review, 64(4), 47-77.
➢ Blackburn, O., Ritala, P., & Keränen, J. (2023). Digital platforms for the circular economy: exploring meta-
organizational orchestration mechanisms. Organization & Environment, 36(2), 253-281.

17. ritala@lut.fi
@PaavoRitala