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The digital economy has fundamentally altered how firms innovate, shifting the emphasis from linear value chains to platform-based architectures that unlock multi-sided interactions and ecosystem-wide value creation. This narrative literature review synthesizes conceptual insights from peer-reviewed studies published in leading management and information systems journals. It examines platform-driven mechanisms that enable novel forms of value co-creation, data monetization, and ecosystem orchestration while navigating inherent tensions between value creation and capture. Core themes include the architecture of multi-sided markets, value co-creation practices, AI and data-enabled transformations, governance and monetization strategies, and evolutionary pathways in digital ecosystems. By comparing theoretical perspectives across these streams, the review reveals how platforms reduce transaction costs, amplify network effects, and integrate artificial intelligence to build dynamic capabilities. It also surfaces unresolved challenges such as platform governance in complex ecosystems, ethical implications of AI-driven revenue models, and the sustainability of value capture amid rapid technological change. The synthesis concludes by identifying promising research directions, including cross-ecosystem interactions and hybrid governance models. This conceptual overview equips scholars and practitioners with an integrated understanding of platform-based value creation as the cornerstone of competitive advantage in the digital era.

Digital technologies are reshaping how small and medium-sized enterprises design, deliver, and capture value. Yet SMEs do not experience digital transformation in the same way as large firms because they often operate with narrower financial margins, limited managerial bandwidth, weaker digital infrastructures, and fewer specialised capabilities. This systematic review examines the literature on digital business model innovation in SMEs from. It focuses on three interrelated themes: value creation mechanisms, resource constraints and capability barriers, and market scalability pathways. The findings show that SME digital business model innovation is not a single phenomenon but a family of related changes involving digital channels, platforms, data-driven services, digitalised customer interfaces, digitally enabled operations, and ecosystem participation. Across the literature, value creation is most often linked to efficiency gains, enhanced customer access, improved responsiveness, digital service augmentation, and new market reach. The review concludes that the field remains fragmented and insufficiently cumulative. More integrated research is needed to explain how SMEs convert limited resources into digital capabilities, how these capabilities reshape business models, and under what conditions digital business model innovation supports scalable and sustainable growth.