Decoding the Successes and Failures of Digital Platforms

Here’s a thought for the weekend.? How often do you download an app expecting it will transform your world?

Super-apps like Airbnb, Flipboard and Spotify give us concierge-style personalised service in a few clicks, saving time, money and hassle. We use them relentlessly; it takes an amazing disruptor or security breach for us to delete them.

Some succeed; the majority don’t.

Creating this dependency is the goal for thousands of platform entrepreneurs and their investors, and for the innovation teams at corporates reinventing legacy products for the digital age.

The platform is the Holy Grail in the digital economy - yet $ millions of funding is wasted each month as the reality of platform design, build, launch, scale and monetisation is challenging.? 95% of apps are deleted after just 3 usage sessions.

We ran our Platform Accelerator pilot over the summer which was stress tested by a group of fintech, medtech, and established global media and manufacturing businesses.?

Source: Peter Williamson and Arnoud de Meyer: Ecosystem Edge: Sustaining Competitiveness in the Face of Disruption

The pilot revealed the common? platform questions they face, and framed the design of our upcoming Accelerator program:

• How much do people – supply-side or demand-side - need you???
• Is your platform idea compellingly simple?? Can your IP be protected or easily copied?
• Is there an unrecognised niche that can be mined/exploited?? If so, how will it grow and what capital is required?
• What insights do you have on context, resources and limitations??
• Are you providing dependency and ‘stickiness’??
• How do you keep suppliers and/or customers onboard and prevent them being lured away by copycats/similar services?

We’ve assembled a team of experts to tackle these issues.

? Shaz Ansari , Professor of Strategy & Innovation, Cambridge Judge Business School ?lays down the principles of platform business?

? Neeraj Gehani , Global Product Director, explains the design and build journey for dunnhumby’s Media platform

? Ron David Sachs , Commercial & Strategic Leader, shares the lessons in launching and scaling Skyscanner’s app, used by 100 million the people each month

? Hamza Mudassir , Lecturer of Strategy at Cambridge Judge Business School, Entrepreneur and Author shows the mistakes to avoid

Working in teams, you’ll be creating and pitching your own platform roadmaps and testing these before bringing back to your business.

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To find out more on the upcoming program starting 9th September, please visit https://lnkd.in/eveyhK_T?

To claim your ￡100 discount please use Promo code Platform100 We have limited places available.?

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Feedback from the pilot Platform Accelerator