Supporting digital business presents exciting opportunities for organizations to create new business models, engage with their partners and customers in new ways, and leverage emerging technologies to create new business growth. However, massive market hype about digital business over the past five years has also created some confusion and conflation of ideas. As a result, there has been a poor understanding of how organizations might leverage platform technologies to support digital business.

In this research note, we clarify what it means to support digital business, refine our market definition for digital business platforms (DBP), and clarify how a DBP is distinct from other platforms and digital business applications.