This book is the first authoritative, fact-based guide on platform models. It explains how platforms connect distinct groups, creating value through network effects. The authors provide strategies for starting and running a successful platform business, identifying prime markets, monetizing networks, and adapting traditional companies to the changing marketplace. They also address issues of security, regulation, and consumer trust, and explore potential platform revolutions in healthcare, education, and energy.
Trebor Scholz's "Own This" explores the concept of platform cooperatives as a democratic alternative to traditional online platforms. The book delves into the principles of worker ownership and control, highlighting how these models can address issues of labor exploitation and power imbalances in the digital economy. It provides case studies of successful platform cooperatives, demonstrating their potential to create more equitable and sustainable online work environments. The book also examines the challenges and complexities of building and scaling these cooperatives, offering insights into their organizational structures and governance models. Ultimately, "Own This" presents a compelling vision for a more democratic and worker-centric internet.
Trebor Scholz's "Uber-Worked and Underpaid" examines the challenges faced by workers in the gig economy, particularly those employed by platforms like Uber. The book explores the precarious nature of platform work, highlighting issues such as low pay, lack of benefits, and job insecurity. It also analyzes the ways in which workers are organizing and resisting these exploitative conditions, including the rise of platform cooperatives as an alternative model. The book offers a critical analysis of the power dynamics between platforms and workers, and proposes solutions for creating a more just and equitable digital economy. It serves as a foundational text for understanding the complexities of platform labor and the need for worker empowerment.
Reaching back through the history of worker-owned companies to the front lines of a new economy unfolding around the world
Trebor's bio: R. Trebor Scholz is a researcher, author, and advocate for fair and sustainable digital labor practices. He is a professor and the founding director of The New School’s Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC) in New York City, where he also operates a research institute with a fellowship program.
Trebor has worked to develop and promote a set of models for building worker-owned and democratically-controlled online platforms, known as “platform cooperatives.” He is the author of several books on the subject of platform labor, including Own This! How Platform Cooperatives Change the World, forthcoming with Verso in 2023, and Uber-Worked And Underpaid: How Workers are Disrupting the Digital Economy, which introduced the concept of platform cooperatives.
In addition to his work at the PCC, Trebor has been a fellow at the Open Society Foundations, the Berggruen Institute, and Mondragon University, and is a Faculty Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He keynotes events around the world on topics related to economic justice, platform work, and the cooperative digital economy, and his ideas have been featured in major media outlets such as Le Monde, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
Link to Trebor's new book, Own this!
Trebor's New School profile
Link to the Platform Cooperativism Consortium
Trebor on Linkedin
Talking about Platforms 
