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Multi‐sided platforms are becoming increasingly relevant in understanding industry changes. The literature has focused on the inception and growth of platforms, neglecting how entrants develop and grow disruptive platforms. To address this shortcoming, we study an entrant that was spun off from an established catalog retailer and is steering a multi‐sided disruptive platform in the German fashion retail industry. We conduct a longitudinal study on how the entrant leverages the relationships with its multiple platform sides during 2014–2019 by analyzing secondary data using topic modeling and qualitative content analysis. We propose three levers: (1) “guarded inception,” which is the collaboration with a knowledgeable partner unaffected by disruption to quickly overcome the chicken‐and‐egg problem; (2) “activating force multipliers,” which is the strategic orchestration of complementors being contractually tied to the entrant and working to extend the entrant's value network. Enabled by these two levers, the entrant was (3) “building on others” to develop the platform along a disruptive path while circumventing internal limitations and external resistance. We contribute to the intersection of the literature strands on platform and disruptive innovation by showing how the entrant strategically leveraged its different platform sides over time to develop and grow a disruptive platform.

The current scholarly debates highlight the role of business models for understanding the dynamics inherent to disruptive innovations. Additionally, research on business models argues for similarities between business models, as they are shared by multiple competitors and across industries. Despite the recent advancements in both debate streams, a consolidation of the research on the underlying similarities of disruptive business models is lacking. Such a consolidation would allow learning from previous waves of disruption, ultimately informing theory and practice to cope with the increasing pace and impact of disruptive innovations. Consequently, this study systematically identifies 122 disruptive business models that have been discussed in the literature during 2006–2019. Based on qualitative content analysis, we then develop a classification framework and propose five archetypes of disruptive business models: (1) matchmakers, (2) standardizers, (3) service providers, (4) open collaborators, and (5) performance reducers. We make a twofold contribution to the discussions around the hitherto tentatively specified business models underlying disruptive innovations, thus emphasizing the contingency of the phenomenon. First, we discuss how the identified archetypes are inducing disruptive dynamics. Second, we elaborate on how the archetypes are constituting paths towards disruption.

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