Platform Revolution: How Platforms Change Strategy with Geoffrey Parker

Platform Revolution: How Platforms Change Strategy with Geoffrey Parker

The internet is the big disruptor of our time, changing the advantage from products to platforms. Case in point, Uber, Airbnb and PayPal. They all disrupted their markets when they launched. Today they are industry leaders.

What’s the secret to their success?

Platforms.

On this episode I talk to Geoffrey Parker, currently a professor of management science at the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, and visiting scholar and fellow at the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy. He is the co-author of Platform Strategy, a book about the new competition and how digital platforms change competitive strategy.

Here some questions we discussed on this episode:

  • Which industry is currently the most threatened by disruption from the platform model?
  • Which new platform businesses have the most potential for growth?
  • Which industries and companies are safest from platform disruption and which should worry the most?
  • Do companies face competition with platform businesses within their own industry or from other sectors as well?
  • How is “value creation” different in a platform model vs. a traditional business?
  • How can pipeline businesses develop platform businesses within their traditional models and what’s an example of a company that has done so?
  • Do all companies need to adapt a platform model? If so, how?

Check out an accompanying presentation:

Watch the recording:

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Intro audio is by Arturo Arriaga, outro audio is Candyland by Guy J.