ABSTRACT
The reasons behind this matching failure were twofold. On the one hand, a lack of coordination explained why demand and supply could meet: It took hitchhikers a great deal of perseverance and luck to find a driver to bring them to their destination. On the other hand, there was a lack of trust between people not knowing one another beforehand: Even if a hitchhiker was heading to a popular destination, along a busy road, they may just be ignored by most drivers or prefer to turn down the offer of the driver who would finally stop. The rapid development of digital technologies and the increased adoption of smartphones have vastly expanded the scope of value creation and capture for platforms. Digital technologies allow platforms to reduce transaction costs substantially, manage network effects more actively, add value to the interactions. While platforms and pipelines are quite different models, they are by no means incompatible. Some companies successfully combine the two models.
