About Ola Henfridsson & colleagues' research

Some of the world’s most profitable firms own platforms that exhibit network effects. A platform exhibits network effects if the more people that use it, the more valuable that it becomes to each user. Theorizing about the value perceived by users of a platform that exhibits network effects has traditionally focused on direct and indirect network effects. In this paper, we theorize about a third type of network effects—data network effects—that has emerged from advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and the growing availability of data. A platform exhibits data network effects if the more that the platform learns from the data it collects on users, the more valuable the platform becomes to each user. We argue that there is a positive direct relationship between the AI capability of a platform and the value perceived in the platform by its users—a relationship that is moderated by platform legitimation, data stewardship and user-centric design.

About Ola Henfridsson

Ola Henfridsson is a Professor of Business Technology at Miami Herbert Business School, University of Miami. His research interests relate to digital innovation, platforms, and technology management. Ola teaches graduate and undergraduate courses related to technology, innovation, and artificial intelligence. He is co-director of the Business Analytics and Technology research cluster.

Ola is a (part-time) WBS Distinguished Research Environment Professor at Warwick Business School, where he used to serve as Professor and Head of the Information Systems and Management group for more than six years. During his time as a head, the ISM group at Warwick established themselves as the #1 information systems group in Europe in terms of research productivity. He has worked and consulted with leading companies such as General Motors, Mecel, Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks, and many more. He is a KIN Fellow at VU Amsterdam. He is also an external expert for the Information Systems and Innovation Group, Department of Management at the London School of Economics. He was a runner-up for the Warwick University 2015 "Outstanding Contribution to Research Excellence" award. He received a Warwick Business School award for "Outstanding Contribution to Research" in 2016-2017. He has won multiple WBS awards for teaching at the PhD, DBA, and MSc programs. 

Ola earned his PhD at Umeå University, Sweden, in 1999. During 10 years at the Viktoria Institute, he managed a research group on digital innovation in the automotive industry and eventually became the institute's Research Director. Ola has been a professor at Chalmers University of Technology and visiting professor at University of Gothenburg, University of Oslo, University of Sydney, and Georgia State University.   

Ola's research has been published in world-elite journals such as Academy of Management Review, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, and Organization Science. He is a Senior Editor of Information Systems Research (2015-2020). He is a former Senior Editor of the MIS Quarterly. Ola is the Chair of the AoM OCIS division for 2019-2020. He is president of the newly founded AIS special issue group on Digital Innovation, Transformation, and Entrepreneurship (AIS SIGDITE). He was program co-chair for the ICIS conference in Seoul in 2017 together with Christina Soh and Youngjin Yoo. He was Program Chair for AoM OCIS at Chicago in 2018. He recently completed an ISR special issue on Digital Infrastructure and Platforms with Panos Constantinides and Geoff Parker, and a JSIS special issue on Digital Entrepreneurship with Sirkka Jarvenpaa and Yulin Fang.