ITT 087: How to Create a Platform with Marshall Van Alstyne

87 Marshall Van Alystne In The Trenches Podcast Tom Morkes


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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.

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How to find Marshall Van Alstyne online:

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