A new organizational model celebrating human creativity. Allowing for exponential growth in order to contriobute maximally to your purpose! Imagine a group of people who join forces. An organization without bosses and without a predefined plan of operation. An organization without employees, where people flock together around a shared purpose, bringing to life a shared dream in ways they themselves deem optimal. Where they can bring in their own talents and complement these with talents of others. Everything develops in an organic way, seizing opportunities the minute they become visible.

1. Platform Model
for
Purpose Organizations
An introduction
Evert Jan van Hasselt
Rob van de Beek

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Platform Model for Purpose Organizations
An introduction
Evert Jan van Hasselt and Rob van de Beek
September 2020
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Contents
Introduction...............................................................3
1 Platforms............................................................4
2 Freedom in connection .........................................6
3 Communities and Engagements .............................7
4 Customers and contracts ......................................9
5 Formulas ..........................................................10
6 Activities in the platform.....................................12
7 The DNA at the heart of the platform....................14

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Introduction
When you are dreaming of a better world and you want to
take action to bring that dream to reality, you can try to do it
on your own. Your will have a much higher chance of success
if you tap into the ecosystem of bright, energetic people out
there, who share your dream. But then you need some sort of
organization. Preferably an organization where people can live
their own passion to the fullest and which allows everyone to
make optimal use of all the talents present in the community.
This is what the Platform Model for Purpose Organizations
brings to you!
Imagine a group of people who join forces. An organization
without bosses and without a predefined plan of operation. An
organization without employees, where people flock together
around a shared purpose, bringing to life a shared dream in
ways they themselves deem optimal. Where they can bring in
their own talents and complement these with talents of
others. Everything develops in an organic way, seizing
opportunities the minute they become visible.

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1 Platforms
More and more we see organizations using some sort of
platform construct. Platforms can be compared to squares in
the center of a city. These date out of the ancient Greek times
with their agoras. Agoras were places where people would get
together to do business or just to have a good time together.
Even democracy started on these squares to move only later
into the building around those squares.
An important characteristic of squares is that people go there
completely of their own free will. Nobody is telling them to go
there. On a pure voluntary basis they make connection with
other people. Some of them they know already, but the
square also facilitates unexpected encounters. It is this
dynamic that is also provided by platforms in an
organizational context.
When looking at commonly known platform organizations –
i.e. Uber or AirBnB – they are often purely online. The
platform model however is richer than that. Ideally a platform

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organization combines offline and online (high touch & high
tech). Offline is where the deep encounters take place that
forms the basis for optimal co-operation. Online complements
this allowing for asynchronous activity, working together
simultaneously around the world, knowledge/document
sharing and reaching more people.

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2 Freedom in connection
Contemporary professionals seek places to contribute with
their personal skills and experience. To do so optimally they
need both freedom and connection. Traditional companies
provide connection, but employees are bound to often rigid
rules and regulations, severely limiting their freedom. The
traditional way to escape these limitations is to become a
freelancer. But the typical freelancer is on his own and lacks
connection.
The ideal working place for contemporary professionals is the
place where they can work as self-employed professional in
connection with other self-employed professionals. These co-
operation models exist already for decades but are typically
limited to small groups of professionals. The platform model
allows for scaling-up. Hundreds of professionals can work
together in flocks or communities on the platform, guided by a
common goal or passion.

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3 Communities and Engagements
The Platform Model for Purpose Organizations supports
communities of likeminded professionals in working towards a
joint goal. Within these communities professionals will work
together in so called engagements. No one will tell them to do
so, it is their way to reach their goal. They start these
engagements all by themselves, building on each other’s
talents.
Where a community is there to stay and develop organically,
engagements are typically short-term co-operations (although
it is possible to setup an engagement for a longer period of
time). After the goal of an engagement is reached, the
engagement stops. The professionals in that engagement will
continue in new engagements within the community or
somewhere else. In contrast to traditional organizations – who
often forbid employees to work for other organizations in
parallel – there is no restriction to professionals what to do
outside an engagement or community. As long as they don’t
jeopardize the goals and dynamics of the community and its
engagements.
There is no top down management in a community.
Professionals can freely flock together within a community and
setup an engagement when they feel they can reach a certain
goal by joining forces. Nobody is telling them what to do.

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They are only bound by the reason for existence of the
platform organization. More about that in the section “The
DNA in the heart of the platform”.

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4 Customers and contracts
No money need to be involved within an engagement. But
since professionals thriving for a specific purpose also need to
make a living, often they try to earn some money with their
activities. In those cases engagements will need to have
customers.
Legally it is difficult to setup contracts between customers and
a flock of self-employed professionals. That is where the
platform organization kicks in. The platform organization is a
legal entity which can engage in contracts on behalf of
engagements.
To make this possible self-employed professionals who join a
community on the platform enter in a generic contract with
the platform. This contract – which is setup to provide as
much freedom as possible – regulates that when the
professional participates in an engagement for which the
platform has a contract with a customer, the professional is –
jointly with his peers in the engagement – responsible for
meeting the obligations in the contract with the customer.

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5 Formulas
When money flows in an engagement a need arises to decide
on the division of that money between the self-employed
professionals in that engagement, and the platform. This is
typically decided on by the professionals themselves.
In order to support this process the Platform Model for
Purpose Organizations uses the notion of formulas. For this a
platform distinguishes different types of engagements. Some
engagements operate towards their customers on a simple
pay per worked hour model. Other engagements might setup
an agreement on a fixed price or even a risk-reward based
model. Yet other engagements might setup an enterprise of
its own, which in time will start to generate profit for the
engagement.
The platform uses a generic formula for dividing income within
engagements. For each type of engagement the platform
derives a formula tailored to the characteristics of that type of
engagement. A typical generic formula could be:
• 20% of the income goes to the professionals selling
the proposition to customers
• 70% of the income goes to the professionals
delivering the proposition to customers
• 10% of the income goes to the platform
When self-employed professionals in a community decide to
start an engagement, they first determine the type of

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engagement. Next they pick the corresponding derived
formula as inspiration for the agreements they make. In the
end they decide themselves on the actual formula to use
based on mutual understanding. Basically the contribution to
the platform is a given. However when the participants feel a
need to change this contribution, they can include a
representative of the platform in the dialogue.
Another note on the platform contribution. Platform owners
can setup any arrangement they like. But since the model is
meant for “purpose first” it is recommended not to target on
profit for the platform. A small profit however is alright, since
this will help ensuring continuity of the platform. Often
platforms start with a contribution percentage of 10%. When
the community grows – and the number of engagements with
it – it should be possible to lower this percentage.

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6 Activities in the platform
Where a traditional company is focused on meeting needs of
their customers, the Platform Model for Purpose Organizations
is focused only on meeting the needs of the self-employed
people in its communities. The engagements will take care of
the needs of customers, each in their own way.
To support the needs of self-employed people the platform will
typically execute the following three activities:
1. Community Management
In order to reach its goals – its purpose – the
platform invests in growing a vivid community. It
provides tools and organizes meetings where
professionals can easily connect and find
complementary professionals to fulfill mutual dreams.
The concept of wholeness is important here.
Communities are like ecosystems. Healthy
ecosystems will perform optimally.
2. Marketing
Investing in the way how the platform as a whole is
perceived by the outside world will help twofold. First
it will attract the right professionals. Second it will
help those professionals to attract parties outside the
platform they need to reach their goals.
3. Administration and Contract Management
Since contracts are setup with the platform as an
intermediate, and as a consequence money flows

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through the platform, handling this is the third vital
activity of the platform.
An important aspect of the platform organization is that it
cannot tell self-employed professionals what to do, let alone
tell them to stay on the platform. In order to attract
professionals and to keep them onboard, it is important to
create an appealing environment for them. And those
professionals play an important role in that aspect to. For a
large part the professionals and the way they manifest
themselves determine the attractiveness of the platform as a
whole. Therefore – instead of working for them – the platform
should work with the professionals to create the place they
want to be.
The Platform Model for Purpose Organizations distinguishes
between activities on the platform and activities in the
platform. Most of the work is done by self-employed
professionals in engagements working on the platform. The
work to support the professionals on the platform (the three
activities as mentioned) is performed by people in the
platform. This is the core responsibility of the owners of the
platform and initially they often do this themselves. But they
can hire employees (or self-employed professionals!) to
support them in this endeavor.
Owners of the platform will setup the platform to tap into
ecosystems of professionals who can jointly work towards a
common purpose. The owners are responsible for the work in
the platform which indirectly benefits the purpose of the
platform. Often they also want to contribute directly to the
purpose of the platform. Nothing stops them to be active on
the platform as well. But there they are equal to all other
professionals, taking part in the community activity and in
engagements.

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7 The DNA at the heart of the platform
How do you make professionals behave in a way that is
beneficiary to themselves and to the platform when you
cannot tell them what to do? How do you prevent
dysfunctional behavior which jeopardizes the common goal of
all involved?
This starts with setting the purpose of the platform clearly and
use that to attract the right people. This will do a good part of
the job, but in some cases won’t be enough. In a self-
regulatory environment still some common rules are needed.
This is where what is called the DNA of the platform comes
into play.
The DNA of the platform sits at the heart of it. It contains a
set of rules to which anyone in the communities and the
engagements should comply. What is exactly contained in the
DNA is up to the platform. Typically the purpose statement is
part of it. Also ways to treat each other in the communities
and engagements, common values and cultural aspects are
part of the DNA.
Setting up and maintaining the DNA of the platform is the
primary responsibility of the owners of the platform working in
the platform (as part of community management). It is
however highly recommended that they include in this process
(part of) the professionals in the communities.