Let us announce the next events of the TU Wien DigHum Initiative. Stefan Woltran writes:

We are pleased to invite you to this talk in our Lecture Series:

Tuesday, December 2, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. (17:00) Central European Time (UTC+1)

Topic: “Digital Power: Platforms and Ecosystems as the Dominant Organizational Form and New Social Institutions of the Digital Age”
(scroll down for abstract and CV)

Speaker: Annabelle Gawer (University of Surrey, UK)
Moderator: Hannes Werthner (TU Wien, Austria)

To participate in the talks via Zoom go to: https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/96389928143?pwd=UU5YRkNuRmdoWHV4MFBwMWRCcUErdz09
(Password: 0dzqxqiy)

The talk will be live streamed and recorded on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/digitalhumanism

For further announcements and information about the speakers in the Lecture Series, see https://dighum.org/#latest-news. Please note that you can access the slides and recordings of our past events via that link.

In case you missed the last lecture by Marc Rotenberg you can watch the recording of “Red Lines and Updates on the Latest Developments in Brussels”.

We are pleased to announce the publication of the proceedings  of the first Digital Humanism – Interdisciplinary Science and Research Conference on 20.-21. November 2025.

Next events:
11.12.25 EUDHIT second symposium on Digital Humanism: “In AI we (should not) trust”
20.01.2026 DigHum Lecture Iyad Rahwan: “The Science Fiction Science Method”

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ABSTRACT “AI and the Global Call for Red Lines – Will It Help?”:

Professor Annabelle Gawer will discuss digital power. In particular, she will discuss the main implications of the rise of digital platforms and ecosystems on competition, innovation, and power. Digital platform firms and their ecosystems are the emblematic organizational form of the digital age, because they tap into the new ways in which value can be created and captured thanks to pervasive connectivity, the availability of processing power, and globalized digital innovation. The paradox of digital platforms is that while distributed patterns of value creation characterize the circumstances that allowed them to emerge, the business models they have adopted have led to a centralised modality of value capture. This has given rise to salient instances of digital platform firms’ abuse of economic power. Platforms have become the private governors of vast ecosystems that span over multiple sectors. But their influence of platform is not limited to economic power. They also exert influence on other spheres of social life, as for example the power to influence opinions. In that way, digital platforms and their ecosystems have also become new institutions of the digital age.

Short Bio of Annabelle Gawer:

Professor Annabelle Gawer is a world-leading expert on the business strategy of digital platforms and ecosystems. Her expertise includes digital strategy, digital platforms and ecosystems, as well as digital innovation and business models. She has been the UK’s most-cited female academic in business and economics for two consecutive years (2022, 2023, and 2025). She has published four books and 40 articles in top international journals. Annabelle Gawer’s work has impacted on academia, government, and business. She is a pioneering management scholar, adviser to multinational companies, and an internationally renowned expert for policymakers in Europe, the UK, and the US. Professor Gawer, a Fellow of the British Academy, has advised the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) as a Digital Expert to the CMA (2023–2025) and the European Commission as an expert in the Commission’s Observatory of the Online Platform Economy Expert Group (2018–2021). She has authored an important report for the European Parliament on online platforms’ economic and societal effects (2021). Annabelle Gawer is a graduate of the Ecole des Mines (France) in engineering and pursued graduate studies in engineering management at Stanford University and a doctorate in management of technological innovation at the MIT Sloan School before embarking on an academic career at INSEAD.

Short Bio of Hannes Werthner:

Hannes Werthner is a retired Professor for E-Commerce at the Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien. Prior to joining TU Wien, he had several professorships at Austrian and international Universities. His research is in several fields such as Decision Support Systems, E-Commerce, E-Tourism, Recommender Systems, and lately in Network Analysis and Text Mining. Besides research and teaching he is active in starting new initiatives, such as the Vienna PhD School of Informatics and the i2c (Informatics Innovation Center). In the area of E-Tourism, the International Federation for IT and Tourism (IFITT) grants the “Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award” to outstanding academics and/or professionals in the field.