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

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.