Publications

2019
Book

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power

By: Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie

The Business of Platforms explores the strategic, economic, and technology management challenges of digital platform businesses. We have five major themes in the book: 1) The world’s most valuable companies are all platforms, in part because platforms have... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Technology; Platform; Internet and the Web; Management; Competitive Strategy; Digital Platforms

April 2019
Supplement

Upwork in 2019

By: David Yoffie and Allison M. Ciechanover

Stephane Kasriel, the CEO of Upwork, the leading platform for freelance labor, updates his progress on how to redesign its business model in 2019. View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Platform; Platform Businesses; Technology; Business Model; Digital Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Internet and the Web; Labor

April 2019
Case

Afterpay U.S.: The Omnichannel Dilemma

By: Antonio Moreno, Donald Ngwe and George Gonzalez

In 2018, Nick Molnar, the founder of the Australia-based online payment service Afterpay began its expansion to the U.S. market. The service had gained a loyal following in Australia by enabling customers to pay for online purchases through four interest-free... View Details

April 2019 (Revised March 2020)
Case

Handy: The Future of Work? (A)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh and Kieron Stopforth

Witnessing numerous lawsuits alleging that online platform companies misclassified workers as contractors when they were actually employees, Handy’s founders faced a series of decisions. Handy was an online platform business that enabled customers to book appointments... View Details

Keywords: Employment; Working Conditions; Entrepreneurship; Compensation and Benefits; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Fairness; Service Industry; United States

April 2019 (Revised August 2020)
Case

Raksul

By: Scott Duke Kominers, Masahiro Kotosaka, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno

Raksul, 2018 Forbes Japan "Startup of the Year," ran an e-commerce platform drawing upon thousands of individual suppliers. Launched as a business-to-business printing services marketplace, Raksul had recently expanded to operate both a logistics/delivery marketplace... View Details

Keywords: Marketplace Design; B2B; Platform Strategy; Printing; Entrepreneurship; Digital Platforms; Logistics; Advertising; Growth and Development Strategy; Industry Structures; E-commerce; Web Services Industry; Japan

March 2019
Case

HOPI: Turkey's Shopping Companion

By: Sunil Gupta, Donald Ngwe and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in 2017 as Onur Erbay, CEO of HOPI, a multi-vendor loyalty platform, is contemplating a critical decision. The case chronicles the origins of Boyner Group, the parent company of HOPI and a major retailer in Turkey, and development of retail and customer... View Details

Keywords: Loyalty Programs; Multi-vendor Platform; Retail; Big Data; Customer Relationship Management; Mobile and Wireless Technology; Business Model; Analytics and Data Science; Competitive Strategy; Decision Making; Applications and Software; Digital Platforms; Technology Industry; Technology Industry; Turkey

March 2019
Teaching Note

Numenta: Inventing and (or) Commercializing AI

By: David B. Yoffie

This teaching notes accompanies the Numenta case, HBS No. 716-469. The focus is how to scale a new artificial intelligence technology, how to build a platform and overcome chicken-or-the-egg problems, and how to utilize open source software and licensing. View Details

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Strategy; Information Technology; Technological Innovation; Commercialization; AI and Machine Learning

March 2019
Case

Wattpad

By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld

How to run a platform to match four million writers of stories to 75 million readers? Use data science. Make money by doing deals with television and filmmakers and book publishers. The case describes the challenges of matching readers to stories and of helping writers... View Details

February 2019
Case

Halliday's OASIS

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Nicole Tempest Keller

Wade Watts has won control of the OASIS – a futuristic, immersive virtual reality game world. He must decide on rules, rights, and marketplace design, balancing the founding principles of the OASIS with the platform’s potentially negative externalities. View Details

Keywords: Managing Markets; Corporate Responsibility; Virtual Reality; Digital Platforms; Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Social Media; United States

February 2019 (Revised August 2019)
Case

Maccabitech: The Promise of Israel's Healthcare Data

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Carin-Isabel Knoop

Dr. Varda Shalev bridges technology and medicine through Maccabitech, a "research and innovation wing" of Israel's Maccabi Healthcare Services (MHS) that partners with research institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and startups. Shalev hopes to scale Maccabitech's... View Details

Keywords: Big Data; Healthcare; Analytics and Data Science; Digital Platforms; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Research; Entrepreneurship; Risk Management; Israel

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 13 Platform Systems vs. Step Processes—The Value of Options and the Power of Modularity

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

This is the first chapter in Part 3. Its purpose is to contrast the value structure of platform systems with step processes from a technological perspective. I first review the basic technical architecture of computers and argue that every computer is inherently a... View Details

Keywords: Platform Systems; Step Processes; Computer Architecture; Modularity; Information Technology; Digital Platforms

SSRN

Read Now

2019
Working Paper

Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 15 The IBM PC

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

The IBM PC was the first digital computer platform that was open by as a matter of strategy, not necessity. The purpose of this chapter is to understand the IBM PC as a technical system and set of organization choices in light of the theory of how technology shapes... View Details

Keywords: IBM; Personal Computer; Digital Platforms; System; Strategy

SSRN

Read Now

January 2019 (Revised March 2021)
Case

SoundCloud: Subscription Streaming?

By: Ashish Nanda, Eric Van den Steen, Andy Wu, Jeffrey Boyar and Bonnie Bennett Slater

Established in 2007, SoundCloud already boasted the second largest number of active music listeners among all streaming services and was recognized as the go-to platform for new artists by early 2014. Yet, its founders were questioning the robustness of the firm’s... View Details

January 2019 (Revised October 2019)
Case

Rural Taobao: Alibaba's Expansion into Rural E-Commerce

By: Tarun Khanna, Ryan Allen, Adam Frost and Wesley Koo

Alibaba's Rural Taobao initiative had been launched in 2014 as a public service initiative to increase e-commerce adoption in China’s remote rural areas. In the first two iterations of the initiative, dubbed “1.0” and “2.0,” Alibaba had partnered with local businesses... View Details

Keywords: Strategy; Business Growth; Ecommerce; Corporate Social Responsibility; Business And Government; Emerging Market; Digital Platforms; Internet and the Web; Emerging Markets; Rural Scope; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Business and Government Relations; Decision Making; E-commerce; China

Article

Friends or Foes? Examining Platform Owners' Entry into Complementors' Spaces

By: Feng Zhu

As platform owners continue to expand their ecosystems, many of them have started to provide consumers with their own complementary applications. These moves position the platform owners as direct competitors to their complementors. This paper surveys empirical studies... View Details

Keywords: Platform; Complementors; Digital Platforms; Market Entry and Exit; Competition

Find at Harvard

Read Now

January–February 2019
Article

Why Some Platforms Thrive and Others Don't

By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti

In the digital economy, scale is no guarantee of continued success. After all, the same factors that help an online platform expand quickly—such as the low cost of adding new customers—work for challengers too. What, then, allows platforms to fight off rivals and grow... View Details

Keywords: Digital Platforms; Competition; Network Effects; Competitive Strategy

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

December 2018 (Revised February 2020)
Case

Fishbowl: Scaling Up

By: Leslie K. John

Fishbowl is a social media app that allows professionals to connect with other relevant professionals both within their company and across industry. Unlike many other social media apps, on which users typically present idealized portraits of themselves, on Fishbowl,... View Details

December 2018
Case

Choosy

By: Jeffrey J. Bussgang and Julia Kelley

Founded in 2017, Choosy is a data-driven fashion startup that uses algorithms to identify styles trending on social media. After manufacturing similar items using a China-based supply chain, Choosy sells them to consumers through its website and social media pages.... View Details

December 2018
Case

Tiantong & Partners: Transforming Litigation Practice in China

By: Ashish Nanda and Lisa Rohrer

Jiang Yong founded Tiantong & Partners in 2002, seeking to radically improve the level of litigation-related services in China. By 2015, Tiantong was the premier Chinese litigation firm with the highest per lawyer revenues. The firm focused exclusively on high-stakes... View Details

Keywords: Law Firm; Law Firms; Growth; Legal Industry; Regulation; Professional Services; Law; Lawsuits and Litigation; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development; Strategy; Entrepreneurship; Decision Choices and Conditions; Legal Services Industry; China