How to Avoid Platform Traps

Companies as diverse as Apple, Facebook, and Uber all have transformed industries through platform business models. But the increasing popularity of platform strategies masks a difficult truth: Such strategies are hard to execute well — and are prone to several common pitfalls.

Carmelo Cennamo and Juan Santaló

FALL 2015

We live in the age of platforms. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple — many of today’s most successful technology businesses have at their core a platform-based business model. Platforms are multisided networks that bring together two or more distinct types of users and facilitate transactions among them. eBay, for instance, links buyers and sellers; Playstation links game developers with gamers; ...