How platform thinking transforms business, society and work
When I started to dive deeper into platform thinking and created the Platform Business Model Canvas, I focused on the business side of platforms. How Amazon, Google, Apple achieved such huge success? What was the secret behind. What are the major mechanics? I read a lot of books, websites, et
I also attended some courses of Prof. Geoffrey Parker at the MIT Sloan to learn from the best.
Based on the learnings and the experiences from client engagements, we created the Platform Innovation Kit, the most comprehensive toolset to design, prototype and scale multisided platforms so far. We also created the Lean Platform Innovation approach to help startups and corporates to have a mindset and a process to build platforms. But again, the focus was on the business side.
About one year ago, I started to realize that behind this multisided platform approach is more — Platform Thinking (like Sangeet Paul Choudary calls it). and the best, you can now observe it in two other major domains — society and work.
Platform Thinking @ Business
This is the most well known and understood part — companies like AirBnB, facebook, Amazon became role models for that. You move from a linear business model (where you produce something) into an orchestrator. Asset light, hyper scaling, disrupting.
Platform Thinking @ Work
When you turn your view from an outside perspective into an inside view, you will also realize that the organization of work sometimes follows the same rules of Platform Thinking. It’s becoming a social touch and helps to organize your work and how you collaborate with others.
A great and easy to understand example is a “best practice portal” or a “Knowledge Wiki”. At these internal portals the employees share their best practices (methods, tricks, insights, etc.) from projects, tasks and daily life routines with other employees. Just by writing it down. Others can learn from that and use the gained knowledge to improve work. My colleagues call it “Social Collaboration”. And that nails it. Employees help employees. And by doing it, they become recognized as experts and gain reputation. A win-win situation. And also the company wins, because such tools important aspects to keep the knowledge within the company, even when employees left. A triple win-situation.
To make such a portal a multisided platform, think about the role of HR. In our example the Human Resources department — which can now better understand who our knowledge experts and which topics are the most interesting one. This can then be used to improve the training strategy by adding such relevant topics into the training catalogue. A quadraple-win situation.
Platform Thinking @ Society
The third main domain where platform thinking makes a revival is our society. I reference to the initiative called “Platform Cooperatism” founded in 2014 and mainly driven by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider. It’s not about earning money, it’s about true sharing. The platform is not owned by a single owner, no, it’s owned by the platform stakeholders (producers, consumers, partners).
The purpose behind is based on the pillars of each society — “fostering an equitable social and economic landscape”. All participants of the platform are granted rights to vote and to decide — not just “using” or “participating”.
Such movements are not new, but Platform Coop is explicitly using digital technology like apps, websites, blockchain to create a fair environment.
More and more Platform-Coop “businesses” are build each day. A good list you can find at Shareable website here.
A great example is Fairmondo.uk, a platform-coop version of ebay. Sellers not just using the platform, but they are the owners too. Written down in the platform statute are points like voting systems, how the earnings are spent, the vision, etc. A great interview with founder Felix Weth can be found here, where he gives great insights.
Conclusion
Platform Thinking has grown up and became the new engine for business, work and society.
The principles behind can be used to create multisided marketplaces, new work collaboration environments or a true sharing society, based on a higher purpose.
Personally I love this trends and I can imagine to see more and more domains where platform thinkings will born new multisided or open approaches.
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Want to design a platform for business, work or society reasons? Check out the free Platform Innovation Kit, a set of canvases to define, prototype and scale platforms.
