Currently, there are 7 platform companies among the 10 companies with the largest market capitalization. The business of these companies is based on the operation of a digital platform orchestrating a digital ecosystem to increase their usage and thus also of the platform opera- tor. The result is a “the winner takes it all” phenomenon. The underlying self-reinforcing network effects have been examined and discussed in many ways, for example in the book “Platform Revolution” by G. Parker, M. Van Alstyne and S. Choudary. The large platform companies mentioned have so far addressed Business-to-Consumer (B2C) markets, but the ideas and concepts have already been used in various ways in Business-to-Business (B2B) markets, too, even if the “winner takes it all” phenomenon has not yet been observed there. Especially in manufacturing industries self-reinforcing network effects are more difficult to achieve with platforms – or take more time to be achieved with impact on both pace and cost of growth. Nevertheless, efforts by new platform companies can increasingly be observed in the manufacturing industry. These aspects are discussed by Japanese and German experts. They analyzed concrete examples, scenarios and use cases from Japan and Germany, which are observable in the market, in order to reach a common understanding of the specific mechanisms and impact and to provide guid- ance in these complex discussions especially to enterprises, politics and research.