Platform innovation in urban mobility transitions: The case of dockless bike sharing

Abstract

In an increasingly more urban and mobile world, platform enabled innovations have emerged as potential drivers for urban transitions. This dissertation focuses on free-floating bike sharing as an example case that has seen an impressive global growth in recent years, facilitated by digital platform technologies. The proposition of this research is that such platform enabled innovations change urban mobility transition dynamics. To better understand this, three important aspects of transition dynamics are studied: business models, institutional dynamics and experimentation. To this end, this research set out to answer the question: How does the emergence of platform enabled bike sharing interact with urban mobility transitions? This qualitative research mainly focuses on the development of platform enabled bike sharing in Dutch cities, but also provides insights from Shanghai, China. The thesis is written in the context of a transdisciplinary research collaboration aimed at investigating the role of cycling innovations in urban transitions. As such, additional reflections are provided about governing platform innovation through living lab experimentation.