For the past 20 years, platform businesses that match, connect, and enable transactions among buyers and sellers have been growing at a tremendous rate. These businesses continue to disrupt traditional businesses in almost every sector and redefine the rules of success. In Platform Strategy, Laure Claire Reillier and Benoit Reillier define the unique characteristics of these emerging businesses, how they operate, and how platform business leaders and traditional business leaders alike can harness their power to develop and scale innovative business models. Through this comprehensive guide, the authors offer solutions to address some of the unique challenges that platform businesses face as they ignite and scale platforms to critical mass and find success in this new way of doing business.
Platform businesses serve multisided markets. While these businesses evolve and change over time, they remain focused on five key activities:
- Attracting a critical mass of participants from each side of the market. Business leaders must attract the attention of potential users and producers and acquire them as new customers. As platforms mature, business leaders must also focus on retaining a critical mass of participants on both sides to build self-sustaining networks.
- Matching producers and consumers of goods. Leaders and platform designers must provide a means of matching producers and users in a timely way that meets their specific needs. They must ensure that there is an optimal level of choice for platform participants as they search for solutions.
- Connecting potential buyers and sellers. Platform designers must provide ways for producers and users to connect and exchange additional information and establish the level of trust that is necessary for conducting transactions.
- Enabling transactions to take place. Platform designers must also provide a means for exchanging the agreed-upon money, information, or services in a manner that drives value for businesses and maximizes the value of interactions and core transactions between buyers and sellers.
- Optimizing their operating and ecosystems. Business leaders and platform designers must work together to fully optimize the core functions of their platforms, including their abilities to match, connect, and enable transactions among their platforms’ participants. They must collect, analyze, and learn from data to enhance participants’ experiences and make continuous enhancements to their platforms.
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In Make Your Own Waves, Louis Patler explains that those starting their own businesses can learn a great deal from the rules followed by Big Wave surfers. Like surfers, successful entrepreneurs must have confidence and an understanding of their own unique strengths. They must prepare carefully and take calculated risks. Success comes from going all in. The marketplace, like the ocean, is unpredictable, so both innovators and surfers must constantly adjust to changing conditions. For those looking to move from start to startup, the surfers’ rules offer a strategic roadmap in 10 steps.
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