Platforms – businesses that connect two or more market sides, and have supply or demand sides driven by network effects. Platform companies are now the most valuable companies in the world and the first trillion-dollar businesses.
This lecture summarizes some key findings from a new book by Michael Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer, and David Yoffie. We will examine myths and realities.
The talk will focus on how digital platforms differ from conventional product or service businesses, and why some markets produce spectacular winner-take-all-or-most outcomes while others result in spectacular financial losses. We will discuss why “platformizing” a bad business does not make it a good business, and how platforms have become “double-edged swords.” That is, platforms have an equal ability to organize economic activity efficiently as well as to abuse increasingly powerful market positions or be subject to misuse by platform participants.