Uber. Airbnb. Facebook. It seems that every Silicon Valley conversation, every software pitch deck, every article on digital transformation must mention these unicorns. Pioneers of the Networked Digital Era. Or maybe The Sharing Economy. Or perhaps, The Platform Revolution.
The latter phrase is the title of the latest book by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Professor at Boston University Questrom School of Business, and his coauthors Sangeet Paul Choudary and Geoffrey G. Parker.
Van Alstyne discussed the Platform Revolution at his recent keynote at the Appian World conference in San Francisco. “Platforms are overtaking energy and banking on the Fortune 500,” Van Alstyne said. “13 of the top 30 brands have ecosystems.”
Van Alstyne contrasted traditional, value chain-based businesses who build economies of scale as they grow, with platform-based businesses who leverage network effects to dominate their industries by building ecosystems of buyers and sellers.
In addition, for every platform pure play like the aforementioned Ubers of the world, Van Alstyne called out traditional enterprises like General Electric as well as hybrid companies like Apple and Samsung, who combine value chain-centric business models (selling smartphones, for example) with broad ecosystems that leverage software-based platforms (like Apple’s App Store, as well as its diverse developer community).
Read the entire article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/04/09/platform-revolution-and-digital-transformation-dont-become-the-next-unicorn/.
Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, Appian is an Intellyx customer. None of the other organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Appian covered Jason Bloomberg’s travel expenses to Appian World, a standard industry practice. Image credit: Tomais Ashdene.
