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Marshall Van Alstyne is the Chair of the Information Systems Department at Boston University, Research Associate at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, Co-Author of the book ‘Platform Revolution’, writer for Harvard Business Review as well as other articles including ‘Strategies for Two-sided Markets’.
In this broadcast, Marshall Van Alstyne and I talk about:
- How his experience of coming up through the Dot.Com boom helped him to understand platforms.
- The four times that giving things away for free works in platform creation.
- Examples of how companies fail to understand the nature of platforms.
- The differences between Network Effect and Virality.
- ‘The Anatomy of the Sneeze’ and how it helps us to understand Virality.
- Host: who is infected already
- Target: who are you trying to reach
- Germ: idea you want to spread
- Medium – the way that idea is spread
- The problems associated with launching a platform.
- Six different launch strategies and how they work.
- The importance of testing your market to see which launch strategy is a good fit for your company.
- The relationship between monetization and launch strategies.
- How competition may affect your launch.
How to find Marshall Van Alstyne online:
- Website: platforms.bu.edu
- Marshall’s book ‘Platform Revolution’.
- Twitter: @InfoEcon
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