Opening the Black Box of Digital B2B Co-Creation Platforms: A Taxonomy

Digital B2B platforms are becoming increasingly important for value co-creation in today’s business networks, leading to the emergence of a diverse landscape of platforms and intensifying research efforts. Yet, practitioners and researchers alike lack a means to structure existing knowledge and distinguish between different B2B platforms. In this paper, we apply Nickerson et al.’s method for taxonomy development to derive a taxonomy of B2B co-creation platforms drawing on 36 research articles and 63 real-world platform cases. We find 17 dimensions that describe B2B co-creation platforms in terms of their platform architecture, their actor ecosystem, and their value creation process. Thereby, we contribute to research and practice: First, we provide a holistic perspective on B2B co-creation platforms by aggregating existing knowledge and identifying the fundamental properties relevant for their distinction. Second, we provide a decision aid for practitioners to evaluate which platform to join or how to design B2B co-creation platforms.