Digital Platform: a New Business Model in the Russian Economy

Abstract

Today digital platforms have become an integral part of our life. They provide a lot of opportunities both for state and ordinary users and for business. It is impossible to analyze industrial countries’ economy without taking into account specific features of functioning and technological trends in the field of digital platforms. The article reveals the notion ‘digital platform’, researches key features of functioning and different types of digital platforms depending on their functions. Literature does not pay adequate attention to such new participants of digital business strategies as leaders of digital transformation, blockchain and artificial intellect. Issues of data management and policy in their respect are still unsettled, while conditions of normative regulation are unfriendly towards experiments with digital technologies. The authors analyzed key challenges facing developers and users of platforms, major technological trends in the near 2–3 years connected with proliferation of platforms, identified risks and advantages for the population and at the same time showed uneven display of trends in various countries within the last five years, which is connected with difference in the level of technological development and peculiarities of home markets and state policy even within a group of industrialized countries. The authors showed acute for state policy issues necessary for lowering the said risks and increasing profits from economy digitalization.