Business Models-Platforms-Leadership
- Establishment of platforms to enable creation of value by people other than those who developed the platform
- Combination of shared central resources and develop-specific innovations
- Core of modern business models behind iOS, Android ecosystems, many others
- Allows innovation at both the core and edges of an enterprise
- Allows solving of very complex problems at enterprise scale and often leaves market, distribution, integration or feature-specific innovations to smaller developers
Examples:
- iOS App Store
- Google Play Store
- Amazon
- Etsy
- Control-based leadership inherited from military models and the industrial age has limitations
- In order to respond in an agile way, teams and employees must have room to improvise
- Modern leadership focuses on empowering teams to be creative and fast
- Creation of ‘doctrine’—guidelines for acceptable improvisation, is necessary for success of employees—in addition to a bare minimum of processes and rules
Examples:
- Whole Foods customer service
- Google
- Agile development
- Multiple locations for workforce
- May be distributed between multiple companies
- Necessitates telepresence and advanced travel functions to be affordable and reliable
- Requires effective decision-making at edges of the organization
- Foundation of large multinational companies, but also very small firms with global presence
- In long term, may affect or effect population migration trends
Examples:
- Pricing model of charging a fee (usually subscription-based) for the value provided to a customer, rather than delivery of a tangible good
- Common in software world with web-based tools hosted in the cloud
- Increasing application to the physical world (mobility as a service via Uber and Didi, for example)
- Requires constant innovation by company, but stabilizes cashflow and upkeep costs
- Lowers cost of entry to expensive or complex systems
Examples:
- Salesforce
- Spotify
- Netflix
- Google Apps for Work
- FreshBooks
- Office 365
