Strategic Technology Platforms

by Sam Mishra, Author, Strategic Case Analysis


Let's think for a minute what platforms are? Platforms are where trains slow down, stop, people get in and out of the trains, and trains speed up, and trains leave. Platforms are essential to trains.

In similar fashion, the million apps (or software applications) written to the iPhone platform depend for their speed and locomotion on the iPhone application platform. To a large extent, the fact that iPhones have taken off teach to the uninitiated in technology a crucial product strategy paradigm: technology managers should move beyond conventional thinking about strategy and capabilities to compete on the basis of platforms, or complements to their core products / product lines.

Let's read the DUMB and DUMBER section from a past home page of the portal to get warmed up a little bit:


I have a friend / side-kick; he is humane, somewhat geeky, and completely opinionated. But he does not get strategy. He also hates Zuckerberg, since he thinks Zuckerberg stole the code from his Harvard project and got Facebook started. In fact, he calls it "Fagbook" and "Fakebook," alternatively. I have had many dialogues with him regarding how trying to be rich is not a crime in this world choke-full with greedy bankers and stealing entrepreneurs (as you know, I love dialogues: my first book Strategic Case Analysis contains a multitude of solved business cases in a Socratic Dialogue format). I have told him that by not having a "Fakebook" account, he was missing out.

So, one day, I decided to teach him strategy, and in the process, make him love Facebook, or "Fakebook." I wanted to explain that Facebook has a good strategy, since it is not a "product," but a "platform." To explain to him that Apple took off after it changed its strategy from Products to Platforms, I started taking about i-Phones (yes, the i-Phone platform to which a million apps have been written)... However, he was already angry that I was not angry with Zuckerberg or "fakebook." So, my friend started arguing over Skype (he knows I save money by using a TracFone): "I own an i-Phone, do you own one?" Before I could delve into Product vs. Platform Strategy, he signed off...

Dumbfounded, I wrote him this mail:

"But I forgive u, since u dont understand strategy...zuckerberg is executing...u r starving...the point is not who owns the iphone and who doesn't the point is who understands strategy and who doesn't

u don't get it hence i call u dumb

did u know twitter generates all the rss feeds for u

did u know an app connects twitter with facebook

did u know facebook paid off the guys in harvard and settled the law suit

who are u

above all laws

like god?

u r a hater too, u hate zuckerberg

grow up"

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I thought the sidekick would wake up, and send me a nice mail. But he was sulking, since I had called him dumb. So, I sent him a second  e-mail, explaining the "Platform Strategy" that high-tech companies need to adopt to win:

"This is how Twitter and FaceBook help me by automating my work for free ---
http://franconomics.com/global-economy-rss.html

Even people in India use it for viral marketing. You must be dumb to be stuck in the google world of products. The world has moved to platforms, and Fakebook is one such platform. Thousands of small entrepreneurs feed their belly by writing apps to the Fakebook platform. I used iPhone as a platform example --- once Apple did that (and changed its focus from products to platforms), its stock started going up... that is strategy.

But you quarrel about who owns an iphone and who does not --- you must be really dumb. And dumber to waste money on the gadget, when u have no income.

If you are so serious about copyright infringement, write to the judges who settled the fakebook lawsuit..."

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While I am hopeful that my friend will someday forgive Zuckerberg for "stealing" the "fakebook" code from his "Harvard employers;" you have hopefully understood the new realities of networking effects we live in... In particular, for high-tech businesses, for a while, it has been not just products, but also services. And now, a paradigm shift is emerging: it is not just products (and services), but also platforms. Especially when it comes to high-tech products and solutions, one can't win by just a services strategy anymore; one needs to think platforms.