Foreword by David Aaker: "Winning Through Platforms"

Dear reader,

This book is a tour de force, providing a comprehensive roadmap for platform-based digital strategies. It is astonishingly broad in scope, organized with a rich conceptual model, and full of deep insights that lead to actionable strategic options. This book is also incredibly timely in the way it addresses topics like Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality. Every executive, manager, and rising professional who needs to cut through confusion around intelligent platforms and then identify business risks and opportunities will benefit greatly by reading and applying Winning Through Platforms.

Let me highlight four specific reasons why I am impressed. First, the central concept of this book – the digital platform – provides readers an expansive look at recent trends in digital strategy. It reveals many different ways that platform data sensing, software code, and computing power enable you to observe, interact with, and provide value to customers as they use what it is they have accessed from your company. The authors show how the customer’s use journey — formerly inaccessible but now visible through platforms — holds the most value.

This book explains how a wide range of companies have creatively used their platforms to beat competitors and create new avenues for growth. It explains the strategic evolution of companies you might naturally think of as platform owners – Uber, Zillow, Airbnb, Salesforce, and Netflix for example. It also explains strategic innovations by companies you might not think of as platform owners – Nike, Haier, Autodesk, Disney, and SleepNumber to name a few. Each company has innovated through platforms to shift what their customers buy and use, opening huge growth opportunities. In all, this book distills winning moves of over 50 companies into principles you can use.

Second, the methods and tools of the platform age are explained in action, from Internet of Things to different branches of Artificial Intelligence (machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and generative intelligence). The book demonstrates how they can be applied in a competitive context to win the customer.

In the same vein, this book helps me better understand why Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality have been on such a sharp rise when their underlying technologies have been advancing for at least two decades. The authors’ depiction of recent widespread platform adoption makes clear that there is much more customer “use journey” data now to access, analyze, and act on than before. Because this book also shows how innovative user journey experiences can drive customer relationship, loyalty, and expansion, the case for company investment is made, including strategic value at a level not seen in the past.

Third, I value how this book organizes winning moves into an amazingly comprehensive playbook. The playbook covers – with equal intensity – platform plays for strategic advantage (business portfolio and platform design), in-market advantage (demand acceleration and ongoing innovation), and organizational execution (operations and transformation). Each of 24 “plays” falls into a way of winning that can drive growth.

To give you a taste:

• A play called “Optimal Platform Roles” provides a thought-provoking set of options for platform business strategy. Including a strategy used by Netflix to build a competitive advantage by creating synergies between its platform (streaming media distribution) and physical business (A-list actor movie production).
• A play called “Success to Momentum” illustrates why and how Amazon Prime and Salesforce Trailhead take different approaches to achieve the same customer momentum goal.
• A play called “Full Journey Engagement” shows how Nike engages customers through a full journey of platform touchpoints to achieve a 4X higher customer lifetime value.
• Other plays explain how Haier and the World Expo differentiate globally through high-impact innovation using platform-enhanced experiences.

By addressing topics from strategy through execution, this book ensures that every reader will find insights that helps them advance today. Additional insights they don’t use immediately will serve them tomorrow as their needs change.

Finally, I like the writing style that the authors use. The 24 plays are not introduced in the abstract but are illustrated by one, two, or more case studies. I also enjoy the diverting historical metaphors that explain needed culture shifts. You’ll enjoy the read as you learn; so will your teams.

To summarize, this book is a guide to transforming in a way that every business needs. By providing critical stepping stones for winning in a platform world, this book can be a real difference maker for every reader, at a key moment of risk and opportunity.

To order the book click here.

David Aaker is the author of 18 books and over 100 articles on business strategy, marketing strategy, and branding. A member of the NY AMA Marketing Hall of Fame, he is often called the father of modern branding. He is Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley and Vice Chair of Prophet, a global growth consultancy.