Home

Joost (/Yoast/) Rietveld is Associate Professor in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the UCL School of Management (London, UK).

His research interests are at the intersection of technology strategy and innovation management. Joost’s research has been published in top-ranked academic journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Strategy Science, Research Policy, and Journal of Management. His research has been nominated for and won various awards. His PhD dissertation was awarded finalist in best dissertation competitions organized by INFORMS and the Academy of Management.

Joost is an expert on platform strategies and digital business models. He has conducted research across various industries, including video games, mobile apps, board games, and crowdfunding. Joost has deep expertise in video games after having studied several of its segments (e.g., console, mobile, PC) and challenges (e.g., platform dynamics, business models, product release strategies). Prior to entering academia, Joost worked at game developer Two Tribes and later as a consultant. More recently, Joost worked on Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of publisher Activision-Blizzard. He has also been retained as an expert witness in a class-action antitrust lawsuit involving the Steam distribution platform.

Joost has extensive teaching and speaking experience. He has designed and taught courses on business strategy, platform competition, and the video game industry at several world-leading institutions including New York University, New York Film Academy, Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, and UCL. He has given talks at a wide range of organizations including Charles River Associates, Harvard Business School, Oxford University, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Facebook, Guerrilla Games, and many others.

His expert commentaries have appeared in Reuters, Financial Times, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Wired, Polygon, Vox Recode, GamesIndustry.biz, GameSpot, LinkedIn News, Seeking Alpha, City AM, Financieel Dagblad (Dutch), BNR (Dutch), and others.

Joost publishes Platform Papers (Substack)—a research blog covering platform competition and Big Tech. The blog is linked to PlatformPapers.com, an online repository that collects and organizes academic research on platform competition across the fields of management, marketing, information systems, and economics.