Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy―and How to Make Them Work for You Illustrated Edition

Wow, this book was an eye-opener! It brilliantly unpacks how companies like Uber and Airbnb have transformed industries by leveraging platform business models. The authors provide clear explanations and real-world examples that kept me hooked. At times, the content felt a bit dense, making me wish for more engaging anecdotes. Nonetheless, it's a must-read for anyone curious about the digital economy's inner workings.

Every so often I lead workshops on pricing strategy. For the past several years I have been telling people that if you are in a conventional business (what Parker, Van Alstyne and Choudary call a 'pipeline business') and you are competing against a platform business you have already lost. Pipeline businesses do not have winning strategies against multisided markets, or as this book calls them 'platform businesses.' This book is the single best introduction I have read to Platform Businesses. If you use (and if you are reading this you do use a Platform Business, Amazon), are working on or may compete against a Platform Business you need to read this book. I have been recommending it to my own team at TeamFit.co to my investees and to companies that come to me for pricing advice.Platform Revolution has many strong points.It explains the feedback loops and network effects (positive and negative) that drive platform business dynamics, the chapter on monetization is excellent and the chapter on governance is a must read (I think I will send a copy to Vancouver's mayor). The book even has a short section on data ownership, which is likely to emerge as a major social issue over the next decade (ask yourself, why does the company I work for own my employee records, why don't I own them too!).Platform Revolution is not perfect of course. My main complaint is the lack of useful diagrams. The book is sketch poor and I found that I had to keep a notebook and pencil beside me as I read to make sure I was following all of the interactions of forces and to give me some mnemonics to remember what I was reading. This is good in that it helped me to build up my own mental models, but I would prefer to have shared sketches that I could use in business planning with other people. I also found the characterization of the two sides of a market as 'producers' and 'consumers' limiting. This is not a useful model to describe many two-sided market interactions, as the authors themselves noticed when they talked about dating sites (dating sites are a good thing to study to learn a lot about very dynamic two-sided markets). I also found the discussion of Porter's Five Forces to be simplistic and dismissive. This seems to be an MIT thing as other people associated with MIT have the same blinkers. A more useful approach would be to look at how each aspect of the five forces gets drawn into platform markets.There are some other good books to read on this theme. I would also recommend Platform Ecosystems by Amrit Tiwana, Matchmakers by David Evans and Modern Monopolies by Moazed and Johnson. But Platform Revolution is an excellent place to start.

This book is an excellent resource to understand the Platform business model, although maybe a bit dated in 2023. It covers all the key points and puts forward to good models. It is not an easy-reading book and you'll need to concentrate and take it one bite at a time. Its probably worth it though if you are thinking of starting, pivoting to, or investing in a platform based business

Having worked at Intel for nearly two decades (1999-2017), with equal time in architecture and business development, I found this book to be a fantastic primer for concepts around platformization. This will help you understand the genesis of platform based businesses and how you might use some of the concepts for your own good. I reference this book frequently for my current work in driving digital transformation at a tier 1 life sciences company.There is no one-size-fits-all guide to platforms. But, this book does a fantastic job of explaining things in terms of value units (not apps), which is much more universal. As such it examines platforms more broadly than just software.Platforms are complicated, especially if you've never been in a business or industry that is platform, or platforms, driven. I'd venture that a majority of modern successful tech based solutions are platform based, if not a platform of platforms. So, if you want to get your bearings, and begin to understand how these principals can be applied to your business, start here! But, there is no substitute for sitting down with someone who has worked within a platform before.Happy reading!

Beautifully explained from a business and technology standpoint - written a few years ago, still, extremely relevant.

A must-read for entrepreneurs, innovators, business developers and product managers. It gives them a conceptual framework that connects purely business considerations with hands-on growth hacks and technical insights. I was struggling constantly to align with my group and the clients on basic concepts, so that the expectations were in line with the still blurry product vision. This book brings clarity to what were hunches before.What makes the book even more valuable is the simplicity of explanation of otherwise complex changes that the digital transformation brings to companies. The concepts are then followed by numerous examples from well-known companies. I'm reading the book for the thirt time already and every page continuousely sparks fresh ideas and solutions for everyday issues and strategic challenges at work.I propose combining the teachings from Platform Revolution with great books on the lean startup principles (e.g. Scaling Lean from Ash Maurya or Disciplined Entrepreneurship from Bill Aulet). It will empower the entrepreneur to better focus on the right business model (the platform) and shorten the time of finding its successful implementation.