Open Access Articles

Industrial platforms are fundamentally transforming the organization and structure of value creation. Beyond serving as intermediaries that connect machine manufacturers, suppliers, and service providers, they enable data-driven decision-making in production while fostering innovation in product development. In doing so, they create new opportunities for collaboration and value creation through enhanced connectivity and interaction across the platform ecosystem.

Industrial digital platforms are considered the driving force behind digital value creation, yet legally they largely operate in a gray area. This article examines what defines industrial digital platforms and what legal framework applies to them. Existing platform regulations apply only to a limited extent to industrial digital platforms, which is why these platforms often establish their own legal framework through their terms and conditions. The article also explores the implications of European regulation, power asymmetries, and the opportunities and limitations of private regulation.

Building a global hydrogen economy requires more than technology and investment; it requires trust. As information systems (IS) increasingly mediate collaboration among unfamiliar, distributed actors, the question of how trust can be deliberately built becomes critical. This study systematically maps how IS enable different types of trust and reveals how these mechanisms can support trusting collaboration in emerging hydrogen value chains.

With their European strategy for data, the EU aims to improve access to and promote the exchange of data in order to create a European single market. Key instruments in this effort are Common European Data Spaces intended to remove legal and practical barriers to data sharing. This article analyzes selected legal obstacles to data sharing, in particular a lack of oversight, uncertainties regarding data protection law, and regulatory fragmentation. The focus is on the European Health Data Space (EHDS), the first implementation of such a data space. Using the EHDS as a case study, the article examines the extent to which Common European Data Spaces are suitable for enabling data sharing, what limitations exist, and under what conditions a transfer to other sectors is conceivable.

Digital collaboration and innovation platforms offer SMEs significant potential to compensate for structural resource weaknesses and to participate in innovation ecosystems. Nevertheless, adoption in the B2B context remains low. This paper examines adoption barriers based on a systematic literature review using Teece’s dynamic capabilities approach. The analysis suggests that recurring obstacles can be structured along three dimensions: Sensing—lack of ecosystem awareness, absence of scanning routines; Seizing—IP concerns, governance uncertainty, adoption fatigue; Reconfiguring—closed-innovation culture, lack of absorptive capacity. Building on this, a practice-oriented capability-building framework is developed with recommendations for action.

Assessing the impact of digital industrial platforms on the dynamics and resilience of supply chains requires clear classification of such platforms. This article examines the extent to which a current classification proposal from the field of supply chain management must be further developed in the context of digital platforms for implementing the circular economy (CE). The authors conclude that a fundamental revision is not necessary, as the digital CE platforms under consideration fit well into the existing classification system. However, new research questions arise regarding the distinction between digital service platforms and digital data-oriented platforms, as well as the link between the circular economy and supply chain management—particularly in connection with supply chain control towers, which are becoming increasingly established in supply chain management practice.

The networking meetings of the research funding program “Dynamics of Digitally Networked Value Creation Systems (DynaVer)” have shown that different disciplines disagree on what interoperability is and whether it is ultimately desirable. This article aims to shed light on the difficulties involved in developing a universally applicable and, at the same time, legally sound definition of interoperability. Furthermore, drawing on insights from competition economics, the article assesses whether and under what circumstances interoperability is a desirable outcome of regulation.

While virtual reality can facilitate hands-on learning, its development faces barriers, including high costs and time demands and scalability challenges. This article presents two case studies that illustrate strategies for overcoming such barriers when training the next generation of skilled workers in environmental technologies. By examining approaches for streamlining development and increasing content relevance and scalability, we highlight lessons learned for future practice. We conclude by envisioning a future in which educational institutions can flexibly and cost-effectively prototype virtual reality in learning contexts, ensuring alignment with curricular goals and learners’ needs.

The rapid advancement of immersive technologies has created new opportunities to transform human-machine collaboration in industry. This paper presents an immersive platform with a digital twin that combines both physical and cognitive characteristics of human dynamics. By integrating multimodal sensing, human biomechanics, and cognitive state into digital twin technology, the proposed system enhances operational safety and ensures better ergonomics. The main argument is that human digital twins are not only desirable but essential for next-generation industrial systems. We discuss the limitations of existing human modeling approaches, outline the conceptual foundations of human digital twins, and demonstrate their industrial relevance across safety, productivity, ergonomics and sustainability.

In recent years, the decreasing cost and improved usability of immersive hardware and software have made extended reality (XR) increasingly attractive for industrial applications. Stand-alone systems with inside-out tracking and camera-based pass-through enable accessible mixed reality (MR) solutions. At the same time, emerging no-code software platforms allow engineers to create XR environments without programming expertise, broadening adoption across production settings. This paper explores key industrial application areas of immersive technologies through selected commercially available XR software solutions for product and process training, spatial instructions and guides, collaborative design review, and assembly and production planning.