ABSTRACT
Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is the ultimate use of digital technology to coordinate the use of all the available transport modes to meet the users’ door-to-door demand. Whim, founded in Helsinki (Finland) was the pioneer MaaS platform. While it is not evident yet how Whim is in the situation to create and capture value from network effects, it is already clear that creating a virtual network on top of transport networks is a valuable business proposition. There is a race to become the operator of the network of networks. Whim is competing with other transport platforms such as Uber and BlaBlaCar, which are integrating an increasing number of transport services other than their original cars: micro-mobility services (bicycles, scooters, car-sharing), coaches and other mass-transit services. General purpose platforms with massive data pools and strong algorithmic network effects, as Google are also in the market. Finally, public authorities are also interested to run the network of networks.
