In a business and technology landscape that continues to evolve at breakneck speed, platform leaders are under pressure to keep pace. The rapid changes can be overwhelming, and open dialogue and cross-sector exchange have never been more essential. This June, Platform Leaders once again convened a diverse group of experts for a virtual event focused on the most urgent issues facing digital platforms today including:
- Misinformation, how to combat fake news
- How to “regulate for growth” in the UK (and beyond)
- The impact of AI on businesses in general (and service marketplaces in particular)
Benoit Reillier, CEO of Launchworks & Co and Platform Leaders Co-Chair, summarises the main insights from the conference in the short video and article below.
Fixing the misinformation economy
The online event opened with a detailed look at the growing challenge of misinformation, presented by Professor Marshall Van Alstyne. As a digital fellow at MIT and one of the world’s leading experts on digital platforms, Marshall is conducting cutting-edge research, and he invited participants to consider misinformation in a different light: as a form of pollution. Drawing on this analogy, he argued that misinformation was a market failure that inflicts harm on individuals and society without being self-correcting. This makes it a structural, social issue, not simply a content moderation problem.
Marshall noted that, while misinformation primarily circulates online, there is evidence that it causes tangible harm in the offline world. He noted that misinformation contributed to insurrections and riots, public health crises, interpersonal violence and much more. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is also difficult to counteract, given the economic incentives. “Fake news and misinformation are extremely easy to create and share, and honest truth is very hard to dig up,” he said. “The cost structure favours falsehood over fact.”
Grounded in robust economic theory based on the work of several Nobel Prize-winning economists, Marshall’s proposed intervention is to introduce different incentives within the system. By allowing users to “vouchsafe”, or stake, their content on the accuracy of its claims – and by introducing verification mechanisms to surface high-quality information – Marshall envisions an ecosystem that amplifies truth but discourages noise. This proposed model is being stress tested, but the early results are promising. According to Marshall, user engagement actually rises with this vouchsafe mechanism.
Regulating for growth
How can regulation not just allow for economic growth, but actually foster it? This question framed the second Platform Leaders session, as a group of expert panellists explored how governments – particularly in the UK – are rethinking their approach to digital markets to actively support economic growth.
“This [new] regulation is not meant to curtail the success of companies, but it’s really rather meant to enable conditions for growth,” said Professor Annabelle Gawer of the University of Surrey, who chaired the panel discussion.
Greenlight Group Partner Daniel Gordon brought his years of experience in both macroeconomic policy and competition in digital markets to the conversation. He pointed out a central tension: many regulatory tools were designed for static markets, yet today’s platform ecosystems are anything but static. He highlighted the need for new regulatory tools, as well as different ways of thinking about these markets. “If we are going to focus more growth in these tech markets,” he said, “it’s really important that we take a nuanced and intelligent approach.”
Panellist Alexander Baker, CEO at Fingleton, also stressed how foreign direct investment (FDI) is likely factoring into the equation for UK politicians urging a focus on growth. Positioned between the EU’s rule-based Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the US’s reliance on litigating competition through the judiciary, the UK’s principles-based approach will certainly be a space to watch. “It will be interesting to see, as these different models play out over time, which tends to support growth more,” Alexander observed.
Meanwhile, Rory O’Donaghue, a global competition policy executive at Google, underlined how traditional competition metrics are changing, especially for tech companies seen as dominant. In his opinion, the ongoing surge of technological development over the past decade -including recent AI innovations- signals that even established firms have to compete and innovate to retain their users. Market share may not tell the whole story, he said, adding, “Competition in this space is as robust as it’s ever been.”
Service marketplaces in the age of AI
The final panel turned the spotlight on how AI is already reshaping service-based marketplaces.
Moderated by Laure Claire Reillier, co-founder & COO of Launchworks & Co., the discussion brought together experienced platform entrepreneurs who are navigating the risks and rewards of AI in their day-to-day work. “AI redefines the rules of competition,” said Laure, as she queued up the discussion. “It’s both disrupting and accelerating businesses.”
Sébastien de Lafond, formerly of MeilleursAgents and now co-founder and President at Edumapper, knows this very well from past and present experience. He spoke about the need to use AI to gain a competitive advantage while also defending against its risks. His recommendation: using proprietary data, expert capabilities and community networks to secure a position as a service-based marketplace in an AI-first world. “At the end of the day,” Sébastien said, “we’ll have to make our business defensible.”
Tito Unda, ex-VP of Product at Job&Talent, offered a hands-on account of AI deployment at scale. After using machine learning to optimise matching and curate content on its marketplace, Job&Talent has gone on to integrate AI agents across core workflows like recruitment, onboarding and user support. Despite the complexity, strategic testing and validation made the rollout a success. “We’ve been focused on making sure that we nail the experience first,” he said. His message to other firms: “Understand that AI is a method, a tool.”
Adding his expertise to the panel, Jeremy Gottschalk, founder and CEO of Marketplace Risk and author of Bulletproof Your Marketplace, urged business leaders to take AI seriously and strategically. “Training these models for your specific use case is going to be where some win and others lose,” he said. In his opinion, AI is increasingly a key differentiator for success, although he said that regulatory inconsistency is a major challenge at the moment.
Collective Intelligence for AI
As at previous Platform Leaders events, the challenges of AI are clearly top of mind for many practitioners, academics and entrepreneurs and a transversal theme across panels. In response to this accelerating transformation, the next phase of the Collective Intelligence for AI initiative was announced.
Preparing individuals, organisations and institutions for transformational AI is at the heart of CollectiveIntelligence.AI. One of the first initiatives of the group was to research how AI was impacting online information search and discovery. A draft white paper on the topic, titled Search in an AI World: Navigating the Transformation of Digital Discovery is now available. The project explores how foundational concepts in search, discovery and recommendation are being upended by AI, and how we should respond. Since the formation of the core working group, members of the Platform Leaders community have been contributing suggestions, insights and comments to the Collective Intelligence initiative..
Expect to hear more about this initiative later in the year and do not hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to be involved.
Shape the debate with Platform Leaders
From tackling misinformation to future-proofing regulation and reimagining marketplaces, the June 2025 edition of Platform Leaders once again brought together a mix of leading academics, executives, policymakers and entrepreneurs.
Through deep discussion and practical insight, this community continues to shape how we understand and lead the evolution of platform ecosystems. The next gathering will take place later this year in London and online. Subscribe to Platform Leaders for updates, and check out the Platform Leaders website for much more, including recordings and insights from past events.
