Three out of nine of S&P500 digital platform companies stand out as building own artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. There is overwhelming empirical evidence of AI technologies are being central to running a digital platform business. However, the current research agenda is not directing researchers to study AI technologies in the context of digital platforms. We have divided the proposed AI platforms research agenda as follows: The first set of questions we propose relates to an overall conceptualization of AI platforms. Thereafter, we recognize specific aspects of AI platforms, which need to be investigated in detail to gain understanding that is more complete. The second set of questions we propose relates to understanding the dynamics between AI platforms and the broader socioeconomic context. This topic might be particularly relevant to economies of countries without indigenous AI platforms. Our paper builds on the proposition that AI is a general-purpose technology, which by itself carries properties of a digital platform.
The digital transformation of firms plays an increasingly important role in the economy and society. However, limited access to data on firm-level digital intensity is an impediment to advancement of multiple research projects concerned with firm digitalization. To alleviate this challenge, this paper proposes a method for estimating firm-level digital intensity based on other more readily available firm-level data and reference data on digitalization, which is available on sector-level. The proposed method utilizes firm-level revenue breakdown by sector to estimate sector revenue-weighted digital intensity scores, which lead to classification of firms into low, medium and high digital intensity groups. The output from the proposed method can be directly used in research concerned with firm digitalization and investigating this multifaceted phenomenon. Results from the application of the proposed method to an illustrative sample of large US and non-US firms (2000 observations in total) indicate that firm-level digital intensity can be efficiently estimated for large samples using data commonly available to researchers.
The key differences between the proposed method and alternative methods are:
Recognition of the fact that firms might participate in more than one sector or industry, which partially explains within-sector heterogeneity in firm-level digital intensity. We found that 67.8% of large US firms and 78.6% of large non-US firms were engaged in more than one industry.
Use of reference sector-level digital intensity scores, which allows for rapid update, application across geographies and time, as well as parallel calculation of multiple digital intensity scores for each reference data. Furthermore, use of reference data enables supplementation of firm-level data on digitalization.
Replicability of the method and reproducibility of the results through inclusion of the source code and availability of data through research and commercial databases.
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