TSD: A GENERATIVE RESEARCH PLATFORM IN THE AGE OF THE PANDEMICS

Platform based IT ecosystems enable new ways of organizing the relation between consumers and pro- viders. This also applies to research platforms established to facilitate the relationship between individ- uals and organizations in producing knowledge across professional research work. This is especially important when researchers need to store, safeguard, and secure real-time harvested data during a pandemic. The platform literature has previously addressed consumer-oriented generativity and how the dynamic interaction between consumers and platform owners affords new business ideas. In re- search platforms, we propose, these mechanisms are different since the consumerization aspects are less prominent. To investigate this interest, we ask: How can we establish a generative platform for real-time research? We frame our study within the platform literature and the literature on generativity. Our empirical evi- dence is a research platform called TSD (Tjenester (services) for sensitive data), which became central to a corona study in Norway. We offer two contributions; first, we establish a generativity framework and applies this framework to explain how generativity in research platforms differ from consumer platforms. Then we analyze in-depth, generativity in research platforms. Second, we contribute by demonstrating how this generativity framework can explain the fast establishment of a real-time re- search study.