Friday, July 22, 2011

The force that Porter forgot


Preston McAfee was the first to realize that Michael Porter's famous industry analysis leaves out one crucial force: cooperation from complements. A new article, How Companies Become Platform Leaders, offers a framework for thinking about strategy in industries like telecommunications where success requires creating an "ecosystem" of complementary products.

A company must first decide whether to pursue a "product" or a "platform" strategy:
Put simply, a product is largely proprietary and under one company’s control, whereas an industry platform ... requires complementary innovations to be useful, and vice versa. An industry platform, therefore, is no longer under the full control of the originator, even though it may contain certain proprietary elements.
One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to pursue a product strategy and fail to recognize the platform value of their product. The best example of this is perhaps Macintosh computer which, due to its early technological lead, could have become the dominant platform for personal computing. Instead they priced high, failed to encourage complementary innovotion, and let Microsoft become the dominant platform.

If you decide on a platform strategy, then the authors recommend one of two strategies, coring or tipping.
"Coring" is using a set of techniques to create a platform by making a technology "core" to a particular technological system and market. ... Examples of successful coring include Google Inc. in Internet search and Qualcomm Inc. in wireless technology.

"Tipping" is the set of activities that helps a company "tip" a market toward its platform rather than some other potential one. Examples of tipping include Linux's growth in the market for Web server operating systems

1 comment:

  1. Platform stratigis is more important for everyone who build the platform. I am very happy to know the discussion which will be very important to me as well. keep it up.

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