Leiter des Forschungsfeldes “Unternehmen, Wertschöpfungsketten und Konsum” at the IÖW since 01/2024, at the institute since 2017. Gesellschafter. M.A. Politikwissenschaft, FU Berlin. Co-heads the field with Christian Lautermann.
Schwerpunkte per his own profile: Plattformökonomie, Kooperatives Wirtschaften, Vergleichende Politikfeldanalyse, Konsumpolitik.
Profiled from the 2026-10-29 crawl of www.ioew.de. No publication of his has been read; see Sources.
Status ⟨2026-10-29⟩
- Ranked third of the three IÖW people with material overlap to SINE — see IÖW → The three. Third by proximity of current work, but first by familiarity of register: he is the only person in 110 IÖW profiles whose profile contains the word “commons”, and the only one containing “Industrie 4.0” or “Plattform”.
- No relationship path recorded.
- The single closest institutional contact point to SINE’s world found anywhere at the IÖW: since 2022 he sits in the AG Digitale Geschäftsmodelle in der Industrie 4.0 of Plattform Industrie 4.0 — the German body in whose orbit Gaia-X, Catena-X and Manufacturing-X sit.
The platform-governance line (2019–2023)
- 2019/20: Fellow at the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy, The New School, New York — Trebor Scholz’s platform-cooperativism centre.
- The Politics of Platform Cooperativism: Understanding Political and Legislative Drivers and Obstacles for Platform Cooperativism in the USA, Germany, and France (2020).
- Policies for Cooperative Ownership in the Digital Economy (2021, with Scholz, Mannan, Plotkin).
- Vom Plattform-Kapitalismus zum Plattform-Kooperativismus? (2021).
- Policies to Transform the Internet from Marketplace to Public Space (2021, with Frick, Gossen, Piétron, Tangens).
- Der Beitrag von Big Data, KI und digitalen Plattformen auf dem Weg zu einer Green Economy (2022, with Fraunhofer ISI and Ulrich Petschow).
- Building Platforms Differently: Collective Action and Legitimation Dynamics in the Field of Platform Cooperativism — reviewed journal, 2023.
- How to grow platform alternatives (fast) (2023, with Greta Franke).
- Projects: Plattformorganisationen in der digitalen Sharing Economy, Digitalisierung und Green Economy, Bits & Bäume — Verstetigung des Bündnisses, Teilgabe, Quincy.
The overlap, precisely. Pentzien works on who owns and governs shared digital infrastructure — collective ownership, collective action, legitimation, the policy drivers and obstacles. SINE works on what such infrastructure must be able to prove without exposing its members. Same object, orthogonal question.
⟨Inference, basis: the publication line read against Data Commons and Ostrom’s commons design principles. “Collective action and legitimation dynamics” is the vocabulary of the governance layer that SINE’s own Data Commons framing occupies — and the bootstrapping problem is a legitimation problem before it is a technical one. He is the one person at the IÖW for whom SINE’s governance pages would read as familiar territory rather than as a foreign subject.⟩
The current line (2024–2026) — and the caveat
His publishing centre of gravity has moved away from platforms:
- Sufficiency for biodiversity: Governing consumption within ecological limits — policy paper, 2025, with Julia Fülling.
- Towards nature-friendly consumption: Biodiversity impacts and policy options for shrimp, soy, and palm oil — 2025.
- EU Deforestation Regulation in action: Towards just and effective implementation — policy paper, 2025, with Fülling.
- Kooperatives Wirtschaften in der Zivilgesellschaft — book, 2024, with Lautermann and others.
- Projects: Konsum naturverträglich gestalten, FoSInKo, Neujustierung von Nachhaltigkeitspolitik im Kontext multipler Krisen.
The caveat is material. The platform work is 2019–2023; 2025 is deforestation and biodiversity policy. Approaching him on platform-governance grounds means approaching him on work he has largely left. ⟨Inference; the field-head appointment in 01/2024 is the obvious candidate explanation for the shift, but nothing in the sources states it.⟩
The EUDR work is its own adjacency: a regulation that requires firms to substantiate geolocation claims about their supply chains is a claim-verification problem in exactly SINE’s sense — and is treated in his output as an implementation-justice question. ⟨Inference, basis: the paper title; the paper was not read.⟩
Relevance to SINE
- The vocabulary bridge. Of the three, he is the one who would not need the premise of SINE’s governance work explained.
- Plattform Industrie 4.0. ⟨Inference: an AG seat since 2022 in the body adjacent to Gaia-X / Catena-X / Manufacturing-X is, structurally, the most useful single fact about any of the 110 people — not because of what he publishes, but because of the room he sits in. Whether that AG touches data spaces at all is unverified; “Gaia-X” and “Catena-X” appear in zero IÖW profiles including his.⟩
- Field head and shareholder — with Lautermann, one of the two institutional addresses.
- Counterweight: his platform scholarship is normatively committed to cooperative ownership as the answer. ⟨Inference: SINE’s answer is cryptographic rather than proprietary — a commons that works without needing members to co-own the operator. These are compatible, but they are not the same thesis, and the difference is worth being explicit about before any conversation.⟩
Open questions
- Does the Plattform Industrie 4.0 AG touch data spaces? The single most valuable unknown about the IÖW. Not established.
- Is the platform-governance strand dormant or continuing? The 2024–26 record says dormant; the field-head role may mean he directs it without publishing in it.
- Relationship path. None recorded.
Sources
sources/research/2026-10-29-ioew-person-level-overlap.md§3, §4 — crawl of www.ioew.de, 2026-10-29. All publication claims are from list entries, not from the documents.
See also
- IÖW — his institute
- Christian Lautermann — co-head of the same field, co-author on Kooperatives Wirtschaften
- Patrick Schöpflin
- Data Commons · Ostrom’s commons design principles · Bootstrapping problem
- Gaia-X · Catena-X — the bodies adjacent to his AG seat