Platform Strategies for Business in the Digital AgeLaajuus (5 cr)

Objective

In this course you will learn a design framework to envision and rollout platform strategies that mobilize ecosystems. It will also equip you with immediately actionable tools and techniques build, scale and govern your own platform.

Identify approaches to building two-sided or multi-sided B2B or B2C marketplaces and select the right one for you
Scan and mobilise the ecosystem and analyse platform adoption at firms like Amazon, Netflix, Airbnb, Tinder, Wolt with key success metrics and pitfalls
Define a go-to-market strategy to grow both supply and demand on the platform and build a strong network effect
Recognise and know how to compete in networked economies and winner-take-all markets.

Content

1. FOUNDATIONS
What makes platforms special and powerful?
How are platforms fundamentally different than product firms?
Why do platform businesses often generate winnertake-all outcomes?

2. PRODUCT-TO-PLATFORM
How can traditional products or services businesses be transformed into platforms?
When does it make sense to undertake this transformation?
How to address the barriers firms face in organising themselves in platform businesses?

3. DESIGN
Why is platform design different than product and service design?
How to map the ecosystem and motivate users?
How does a platform’s architecture choices resolve conflicting interests of its multiple constituents?
What should platforms own and what should they not?

4. LAUNCH
How many sides should a platform have?
Which side should you start growing first and how?
How to solve the chicken-or-egg problem, gain critical mass and ignite network effect?
How to deal with competition and multi-homing?

5. PLATFORM CANVAS DESIGN
In this interactive hands-on session you will scan and mobilise open ecosystems and produce a platform business model for your own or your next company. We will utilize a proven Platform Canvas tool to facilitate the work. Working in groups, students review each other’s canvas and prototype a Minimum Viable Platform.

6. MONETIZATION
How to choose a successful revenue model for platforms?
Under what conditions should a platform subsidize the participation of one or multiple sides?
How should the pricing structure change over the platform’s lifecycle?

7. TOOLS
What tools can ease access to your platform, facilitate transactions, reduce frictions and provide further support to your users?
What AI, tech and other third-party integrations should be embedded into the platform?
How to optimise the matching between supply and demand?
How to improve how your value proposition is communicated to your users?

8. GOVERNANCE
How much control should a platform take over the interactions it enables?
What curation mechanisms will increase traction and ignite network effect on your platform?
How to build a community and grow both supply and demand simultaneously?
How to avoid legal risks and users bypassing your platform?

9. METRICS
What data strategy and metrics can be implemented to measure successful platform transactions?
How do these metrics differ from those implemented by linear business models?
How metrics should evolve in the growing phase of a platform?

10. POLICY AND REGULATION
Do platforms play by different rules and should they?
When and how should platforms be regulated?
Can platforms become anti-competitive monopolies?
What antitrust and other policies platforms should watch out for?

11. NEW PLATFORMS
Why blockchain and cryptonetworks represent the new frontier of platform business models?
How to design decentralised autonomous organisations and integrate distributed ledger technologies into a platform?
What permission (private) and permissionless (public) approaches to implement to blockchain-powered platforms?

1:1 COACHING SESSION
Each student will get one customised coaching session with the instructor after the course.