The future of digital platforms
AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Next event coming soon
Next event coming soon
An initiative by Launchworks & Co
Platforms and their ecosystems are now part of our daily lives. They are redefining the way we work, the way we learn, how we innovate and how we collaborate. As a community of platform leaders, how do we ensure that the full potential of these digital ecosystems is realised for all?
What is Platform Leaders?
Platform Leaders brings together entrepreneurs, policy makers, academics, investors and practitioners to exchange insights and best practices on the future of digital platforms and ecosystems. These communities don’t always talk to each other, yet are collectively building the platform economy. Platform Leaders provides strategic insights into key topics and allow experts to share complementary perspectives to shape the debate so that the potential of digital markets can be unlocked for all.
Agenda
The 18 November 20025 was our 10th event and we touched upon a range of hot topics including new emerging digital trends for 2026, how to prepare individuals, organisations and institutions for transformative AI, how to be visible online in the age of AI and the interplay between policy and product development. We also announced the 2025 Platform Leaders Academic Prize, which was awarded to Dr. Manav Raj for his paper "More is (sometimes) merrier".
Full Video - 18 November 2025
Watch the 18 November 2025 full video on the Future of Platforms and Artificial Intelligence which took place at Digital Catapult in Central London.
Collective Intelligence for AI Launch - 18 November 2025
Laure Claire Reillier, Co-Founder & COO Launchworks & Co, and co-author of Platform Strategy, introduces Collective Intelligence for AI, a new initiative to help individuals, organisations and institutions prepare for transformative AI. The session explores the themes to be addressed in 2026 and beyond.
Search in the age of AI: from Keywords to Conversations - 18 November 2025
This panel, with Jon Earnshaw, Chief Product Evangelist, Pi Datametrics, Polly Dhaliwal, COO, Enterprise Nation, Prof Alex Yang, Professor, London Business School and Laure Claire Reillier, Co-Founder & COO, Launchworks & Co, explores how search is being transformed in the age of AI.
Platform Leaders 2024 Inaugural Academic Prize - 18 November 2025
Dr Manav Raj presents key insights from the 2025 Platform Leaders winning paper "More is (sometimes) merrier" in his acceptance speech.
Key Digital Trends for 2026
Benoit Reillier, Co-Founder & CEO Launchworks & Co, and co-author of Platform Strategy, presents his emerging digital trends for 2026.
From Policy to Product: Compliance by Design - 18 November 2025
Brian Williamson, Partner Communications Chambers, Alexander Waksman, Partner, Competition Law, gunnercooke, Prof. Annabelle Gawer, Chaired Professor in Digital Economy, Surrey University and Oliver Bethell, Head of Competition, Regulatory Engagement & Advisory, Google, discuss how tech firms can embed policies into products.
More is (sometimes) merrier by Manav Raj - 18 November 2025
The 2025 Platform Leaders Academic Prize is being awarded to Dr Manav Raj for his paper "More is (sometimes) merrier: Heterogeneity in demand spillovers and competition on a digital platform", which highlights insights about launching new music as the same time as stars on Spotify.
Below are confirmed speakers for 18 November as well as jury members for the academic prize.
Laure Claire Reillier
Laure Claire Reillier
Laure Claire Reillier is Co-founder and COO of Launchworks & Co, the leading experts for designing and scaling marketplaces & platforms. Formerly a senior exec at eBay Europe, she has 20 years’ experience in developing, managing and marketing products and services for digital, e-commerce, and platform companies.
Laure Claire was appointed in 2019 as one of the 8 experts on digital platforms at the World Economic Forum. She is also the co-author of Platform Strategy: How to unlock the power of communities and networks to grow your business and Mission BlaBlaCar.
Oliver Bethell
Oliver Bethell
Oliver is Head of Competition, Regulatory Engagement & Advisory at Google where he leads a large multidisciplinary and cross functional team covering Policy, Legal, Economists, Product, Eng, Comms.
He was previously in private practice at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in Brussels before moving to Google’s in-house team in London in 2008.
Oliver is a graduate of Oxford University, BPP Law School and King's College. He is a member of the Bar of England and Wales.
Oliver was named Competition Individual of the Year, 2018 (Global Counsel Awards); Competition Individual of the Year, 2018 (European Counsel Awards); and Corporate Counsel of the Year, 2012 (Global Competition Review).
Benoit Reillier
Benoit Reillier
Benoit Reillier specialises in strategy and corporate development for innovative high growth companies and platform businesses/ecosystems. He has been advising the boards and top management teams of many blue chip companies as well as regulators and Governments for more than 20 years.
Prior to founding Launchworks Benoit was Director of Economics and Regulation at KPMG where he focused on Telecommunications, Media and Technology clients globally. Benoit is a guest lecturer in a number of top business and engineering schools and is in charge of the executive Platform Strategy module of the HEC Paris MBA. He is a graduate from IMT Business School in Paris and holds Master degrees in Management, Economics and Law. Benoit is also a graduate from Columbia University in New York and London Business School (MBA).
He is the co-author of Platform Strategy: How to unlock the power of communities and networks to grow your business and Mission BlaBlaCar.
Sandrine Zhang Ferron
Sandrine Zhang Ferron
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Sandrine Zhang Ferron is the Co-Founder and CEO of Vinterior. Born in China, Sandrine emigrated to France as a child in the 90s. Her family home was focused on utility and function, a consequence of her parent’s upbringing in Communist China. It wasn’t until later in life that Sandrine’s love and exploration into design developed. As she travelled, her exposure to different cultures and design viewpoints led her to develop a love of vintage due to its ability to transform a space, bringing character to a room.
Sandrine majored in finance and graduated from ESSEC Business School in France before embarking on a career in London focusing on structured products sales covering institutional investors in Benelux and Switzerland. Her next role was in the investment team of a family office.
Sandrine left finance to start Vinterior in 2015 following an extensive search for a yellow Poul Volther chair. Endless weekends were spent scouring vintage dealers around London and though eventually successful, Sandrine realised there was a need for an online marketplace where people could easily search and buy quality pre-owned and vintage furniture.
In early 2016 Sandrine learnt to code and launched the initial iteration of Vinterior. The first sale was a pair of Belgian mid-century armchairs. By 2017 the vintage marketplace was booming and Vinterior hit a humbling milestone, £1 million in sales, securing a venture capital injection and creating a marketplace of 500 sellers. The next key marker was reached in 2021, following a series A funding round of £8 million.
Sameer Singh
Sameer Singh
Sameer, a Partner with Speedinvest's Marketplaces & Consumer team, specializes in products with network effects. He is also an instructor at Reforge and authors a widely read blog about network effects at breadcrumb.vc. Previously, he was part of the Atomico Angel Program.
Before switching to the investor side of the table, he spent 5 years at App Annie (now called data.ai) – a company backed by Sequoia, IVP, and Greycroft. He had a front row seat to App Annie’s hypergrowth journey as the company grew from $20M to $140M in ARR during this time. During this journey, he led the global value consulting team, translating the value of App Annie’s data to new and existing customers, advising customers like Spotify, Shpock, and Trainline.
Originally from Hyderabad in India, Sameer is an engineer with an MBA. He started his career in investment banking, but his interest in technology took him in a different direction. This interest led him to write a widely read blog about mobile and technology businesses, which has been referenced in Philip Tetlock's seminal book, Superforecasting. This eventually brought him to London and to the startup world. During this time, he became deeply interested in understanding the patterns of successful startups – leading to his love for network effects.
Brian Williamson
Brian Williamson
Brian Williamson is a partner at Communications Chambers, and has consulted and published at the intersection of technology, economics and public policy. Recent work has focussed on the contribution of AI to the economy and society, AI regulation and regulation for AI, Copyright and AI and cloud computing. Brian previously worked in government.
Prof. Annabelle Gawer
Prof. Annabelle Gawer
A world-class academic pioneer in platform strategy, Prof Annabelle Gawer is a thought leader and expert advisor on the business of digital platforms and platform-based innovation ecosystems. Professor Gawer was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023. Author of 40 articles and 4 books on platforms including The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power with M Cusumano (MIT) and D Yoffie (Harvard Business School) (2019) and Platform Leadership with Michael Cusumano, her 2021 study Online Platforms: Economic and Societal Effects (with N Srnicek) was published by the European Parliament. Her Google Scholar profile indicated over 27,500 citations as of October 2024.
Prof Gawer was appointed an independent digital expert for the UK Competition and Markets Authority in 2023 to help ensure fair competition in digital markets. She has advised the European Commission on the regulation of online platforms as an Expert Member of the European Commission’s Observatory of the Online Platform Economy (2018-2021). She has also advised the UK Parliament House of Lords, the UK Government, and the OECD. She regularly consults for major international corporations on platform and ecosystem strategy.
Prof. Nicos Savva
Nicos Savva
Professor Nicos Savva is an expert in data science, using it to solve operational problems and help large organisations develop data-science capabilities. His research focuses on healthcare management, including hospital operations, regional organization of care, assessing performance, measuring health inequity, and innovation. His work has appeared in leading journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production & Operations Management, and Nature Biotechnology. He is a Department Editor of Management Science.
Nicos has acted as an external advisor to NHS England/NHS Improvement, and a consultant to hospitals, biotech companies, high-tech start-ups, retail firms, and a hedge fund. He also advises on the policy implications of algorithms. Besides LBS, he has also taught at The Wharton School, Columbia GSB, and at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
Professor Savva has a MA, MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge.
Laura McCracken
Laura McCracken
Laura McCracken is a FinTech and platform veteran with over 25 years of commerce and payments industry experience. She held senior positions at Facebook (Meta), Amazon, Citi, and American Express. Most recently, she was an MD at Accenture, leading the Social Commerce & Payments industry vertical globally.
She currently advises leadership teams of Fintech companies at Launchworks & Co on a wide range of strategic topics including social commerce, marketplace, payment and mobile wallet. She also serves on the board of The Payments Association (TPA) and is an Independent Non-Executive Director at Guavapay.
Having lived in London, Luxembourg, Singapore, New York and Los Angeles and worked across over 30 markets in North America, EMEA, Russia/CIS and Asia Pacific, Laura has a unique international network and views the world through a global lens.
She holds a BS in Accounting from Auburn University and MBA degrees from Columbia and London Business School.
Alexander Waksman
Alexander Waksman
Alexander acts for companies in antitrust proceedings before courts, competition authorities and sectoral regulators in the UK, the European Union, and other jurisdictions. He has extensive experience in behavioural cases, merger control reviews, market studies and investigations, competition litigation, and complex compliance matters.
His practice is unusually versatile. He acts for complainants, defendants, and interested parties; his clients range from the largest companies in the world through to SMEs and professional associations; and, alongside traditional antitrust work, he assists clients on law reform and policy advocacy. He has particular expertise in emerging regulatory regimes for digital platforms.
Alexander is recognised as an authority in the field. He co-authored a comprehensive textbook on UK competition law (‘UK Competition Regime: A Practitioner’s Guide’, published by Sweet & Maxwell in September 2021). He was named a ‘future leader’ in Who’s Who Legal 2021 and was shortlisted as a ‘rising star’ of private practice at the British Legal Awards 2019. Since 2019, he has been a board member and editorial writer for the European Competition Law Review.
He holds a BA in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford and a Master’s degree in Law and Economics from the universities of Hamburg, Bologna, and Haifa. Alexander has published more than a dozen articles in leading law journals and has delivered talks at trade association meetings, competition law conferences and university seminars.
Limvirak Chea
Limvirak Chea
Limvirak Chea is the co-founder and CEO of Fixter, the online platform offering comprehensive car maintenance services across the UK. Launched in Manchester in 2017, Fixter rapidly expanded from a UK tech startup to an international garage network within five years. Supported by a small, skilled team — including certified mechanics and professionals — Fixter attracted investment from AXA and was eventually acquired by Renault.
Limvirak is a graduate from CentraleSupélec and Cornell University (MS, Electrical Engineering).
Jon Earnshaw
Jon Earnshaw
Jon is Co-Founder & Chief Product Evangelist at Pi Datametrics and has worked in search for 20+ years. Previously an academic and still a Visiting Lecturer, Jon works on Global SEO Strategy and specialises in voice and conversational search.
Polly Dhaliwal
Polly Dhaliwal
Prof. Alex Yang
Prof. Alex Yang
S. Alex Yang is Professor and Area Chair of Management Science and Operations at London Business School. An expert at the intersection of technology, finance, and value chain, Alex’s recent research examines the value chain of AI and innovations in platform governance and operations.
Beyond academic publications, Alex regularly shares his perspectives with a broader audience through contributions to major news outlets including Bloomberg, the Economist, Financial Times, Forbes, Project Syndicate and The Washington Post.
Alex has advised and collaborated with a range of industry partners, including major digital platforms such as Alibaba and Didi Chuxing, as well as international organizations such as Asian Development Bank.
2:00PM – 2:30PM
GUEST REGISTRATION
In-person guest registration and networking at Digital Catapult.
2:30PM – 2:35PM
WELCOME TALK
Start of the online webinar and the in-person conference.
Platform Leaders introduction by the master of ceremony.
2:35PM – 3:10PM
KEYNOTE: DIGITAL TRENDS 2026
Platform Leaders co-chair and Launchworks & Co CEO Benoit Reillier will present his key digital trends for 2026 and discuss how to prepare individuals, organisations and institutions for transformative AI.
3:10PM – 3:30PM
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR AI
Platform Leaders co-chair and Launchworks & Co COO Laure Claire Reillier will present the new collective intelligence for AI initiative.
3:30PM – 4:10PM
FROM POLICY TO PRODUCT: COMPLIANCE BY DESIGN
Digital regulators in Europe and the UK are rewriting the rules of the game. The session explores how tech organisations translate fast-evolving digital market rules into practical product decisions—balancing innovation, due process and measurable outcomes. In particular, the panellists will touch upon the move from ex post to ex ante models of competition, the differences between UK and EU approaches and explore how firms can embed compliance into product design from the outset — not just to avoid penalties, but to build fair, interoperable, and trusted platforms.
How can regulators ensure clarity, proportionality, and predictability while still safeguarding consumers and competition? How can regulatory requirements be turned into user-friendly features that build trust? What are the trade-offs when embedding compliance into early product design, particularly in fast-moving areas like AI?
4:10PM – 4:40PM
COFFEE BREAK
4:40PM – 5:30PM
SEARCH IN THE AGE OF AI: FROM KEYWORDS TO CONVERSATIONS
As users shift from traditional search to conversational AI systems like Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity, visibility is moving from ranked pages to AI recommendations. The session will discuss what this means for organisations and users—and how to ensure digital discovery in an AI age. We’ll hear from SEO practitioners, platform leaders, and GenAI innovators on how quickly this transformation is unfolding, the risks of ignoring it, and the strategies businesses need to adopt to remain visible.
What strategies matter when visibility depends on AI recommendations instead of rankings? How should organisations structure content to be discoverable and trusted by AI systems? How will the search market continue to evolve?
5:30PM – 5:50PM
ANNOUNCING PLATFORM LEADERS ACADEMIC PRIZE
Join us to discover this year’s Platform Leaders Academic Prize winners!
Each year, Platform Leaders awards a prize to an academic paper that demonstrates exceptional relevance and practical applications to the business world. This year’s finalists have been selected in partnership with platformpapers.com. The winner is selected by the 2025 business jury, which includes:
Sameer Singh, Partner at Speedinvest, Limvirak Chea, Founder and CEO at Fixter, Laure Claire Reillier, COO Launchworks & Co, Sandrine Zangh Ferron, Founder and CEO Vinterior, and Benoit Reillier, CEO Launchworks & Co.
The winners will present their research, discussing its business implications, alongside a specially commissioned illustrated video sponsored by Platform Leaders.
5:50PM – 6:00PM
CONFERENCE WRAP UP
Closing remarks and key insights from the event by our master of ceremony and conference co-chairs.
