Last week, UCL School of Management Assistant Professor Joost Rietveld appeared on the “Talking About Platforms” podcast to discuss his research project – Market Orchestrators: The Effects of Certification on Platforms and their Complementors – which explores the impact of social performance badging systems using Kiva’s microfinancing platform as the setting.

Speaking on “Talking about Platforms”, Joost explores the omnipresence of platforms in the modern world and, more specifically, the relationship between platforms and complementors and the ways in which it can impact the overall ecosystem of a particular platform. 

In the podcast Joost discusses his research paper with co-authors, Robert Seamans and Katia Meggiorin (published in Strategy Science) in which they investigate the unexpected introduction of Kiva’s social performance badging system whereby comparable microfinancing institutions were either given or not given a badge to celebrate the social impact of their loans. Focusing specifically on female borrowers, Joost found that the presence of a badge that celebrates Kiva as a platform that encourages women to borrow, irrefutably provides an incentive for more women to borrow or lend on Kiva.

Addressing the future, Joost discusses the role of platforms in orchestrating and regulating content, questions the extent to which platforms can continue to dominate modern society, and calls for more research on complementors in order to further enhance our knowledge on platforms.

Listen to the full episode here.