HBR's 10 Must Reads on Platforms and Ecosystems

Bol Partner

Competition is moving beyond industry to ecosystem. Are you ready? Help your company adapt to the new rules of competition. If you read nothing else on creating value with business platforms and ecosystems, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you reap the rewards of multisided platforms (MSPs)—or defend your company against these formidable opponents. This book will inspire you to: Assess the threat of disruption from platforms in your industry Decide whether and how to play with increasingly powerful platform businesses Choose the right Strategy for transforming your product into a platform Harness network effects to maximize value for the partners in your ecosystem Shift from managing products to managing interactions Learn when moving first and growing fast will work—and when it won’t Manage winner-take-all dynamics This collection of articles includes "Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy," by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Sangeet Paul Choudary; "Strategies for Two-Sided Markets," Thomas R. Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall W. Van Alstyne; "Finding the Platform in Your Product," by Andrei Hagiu and Elizabeth Altman; "What's Your Google Strategy?," by Andrei Hagiu and David B. Yoffie; "In the Ecosystem Economy, What’s Your Strategy?," by Michael G. Jacobides; "Right Tech, Wrong Time," by Ron Adner and Rahul Kapoor; "Managing Our Hub Economy," by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani; "Why Some Platforms Thrive and Others Don't," by Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti; "Spontaneous Deregulation," by Benjamin Edelman and Damien Geradin; "Alibaba and the Future of Business," by Ming Zeng; and "Fixing Discrimination in Online Marketplaces," by Ray Fisman and Michael Luca. HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever‐changing business environment.

Bol

Competition is moving beyond industry to ecosystem. Are you ready? In the shift from pipeline to platform, value is no longer created by your company's product or process alone—it's created through interactions. And the strategy you used to become an industry leader won't help you compete in an evolving and complex ecosystem. If you listen to nothing else on platforms and ecosystems, listen to these ten articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you address classic challenges such as navigating the shift from controlling resources to orchestrating them, redefining value, thwarting competitive threats, and adapting your strategy. This book will inspire you to: manage network effects and inspire users to attract more users; understand the myriad dynamics at play in a platform business; decide whether to be a chief architect or a complementor in your ecosystem; consider which of your company's existing products and services can be turned into platforms; shift from managing products to managing interactions; collaborate with other firms in an ecosystem that spans sectors; and learn to allocate—and reallocate—resources as conditions change.