Platform Strategy - by Tero Ojanperä & Timo O Vuori (Paperback)

About the Book

Learn how to become a platform business with seven steps that will futureproof and diversify your offering.

Book Synopsis

What do Amazon, Google, Visa and AirBnB all have in common? They are all platform businesses. They know they can go beyond their industry segments. They capitalize on wider ecosystems that strengthen their offering and expand commercial opportunities. And now your business can do the same.

Welcome to the world of platform businesses. In Platform Strategy one of the world's most creative men in business according to Fast Company and a leading strategy professor at a Financial Times top 40 business school show you the ropes. They lead you through the seven steps you can take to turn your business into a successful platform. Learn to harness emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, cement your business into thriving ecosystems and go beyond industry boundaries. Uncover how business leaders at companies as diverse as John Deere, KONE, and Visa are leading their businesses to the future by reinventing their business model.

Authors Tero Ojanperä and Timo Vuori distil the disrupters' methods to an actionable. In Platform Strategy they put the emphasis on what you can do as leader; harness new technologies, work with partners but also crucially, recognize the fear of change in your people and utilize that energy to drive progress. More than just about technology, this book is at the centre of the leadership agenda for the future.

Review Quotes

"Ojanperä and Vuori's Platform Strategy is a unique book. It combines Ojanperä's hands-on experience of a senior executive grappling with the opportunities and threats of platform dynamics and Vuori's path-breaking work on the impact of affect and emotions on senior team action. As a result, Platform Strategy is an amazingly helpful book linking platforms and AI to an incumbent firm's shift in strategy and, in turn, organizational transformation. The uniqueness of this book is that it provides research-based and experience-based insights to help senior executives both think and feel their way through platform strategies. This book belongs on leaders' desks as well as academics' desks."-- "Michael Tushman, Professor, Harvard Business School and author of Lead And Disrupt, Winning Through Innovation And Navigating Change: How CEOs, Top Teams, And Boards Steer Transformation"

"As C-Level executives or non-executive directors of technology companies, we all strive to stay current with the technologies that underpin the power and appeal of platforms and AI. The bigger challenge however is to distill this down to a set of practical priorities that are executable and scalable across distributed workforces. The authors explain in a practical way how to get started with building an intelligent platform to transform your business. But even more importantly, you will learn what you can do as a leader to drive change and help your team, colleagues, and external stakeholders succeed in an ever-increasing competitive world."-- "Rick Simonson, Managing Partner, Specie Mesa LLC and Former CFO, Sabre Corporation and Nokia"

"AI and platforms are common denominators for winning strategies in the future. Ojanperä and Vuori show how you can transform your business with lessons learned from the best companies in the world."-- "John Lindfors, Managing Partner, DST Global"

"AI and platforms drive digital transformation touching every industry segment. Opportunities to disrupt or be disrupted abound. In between the two extremes, components for sustainable competitive advantages are available for the fastest movers. Platform Strategy provides a straightforward seven-step program on how executives build and execute a strategy for the AI and platform era. Its unique approach builds on extensive research, numerous case studies, and practical guidance - a must-read book for leaders."-- "Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman, F-Secure Corporation and Former Chairman, Nokia"

"Creating a platform business and adopting AI are fundamental challenges for many organizations today. Ojanperä and Vuori build on their senior executive experience and top-tier research to provide a step-by-step guide for transforming your business. You learn how to manage both the hard business challenges and the softer human forces that determine whether you will succeed or fail."-- "Laura Huang, Professor, Harvard Business School and author of Edge: Turning Adversity Into Advantage"

"Platform business models together with AI create a new competitive advantage and superior value for customers. A clear and practical guide on how to build an Intelligent Platform with your team and external stakeholders."-- "Henrik Ehrnrooth, CEO, KONE"

"This book brilliantly ties together the essential components needed for transforming your business using AI, platform thinking, and human creativity."-- "Mårten Mickos, CEO, Hacker One, Former CEO, MYSQL and Senior Vice President, HR and Sun Microsystem"

"This book provides a comprehensive and cutting edge set of insights on how to succeed in deploying value-creating platforms, relying on state-of-the-art technologies such as AI and machine learning. It provides many practical step-by-step frameworks for executives to plan their implementation of platform-based offerings. One of the book's more distinctive values is that it combines both hard and soft considerations. The authors provide many useful insights related to hard aspects such as strategies, organizational structures and systems, and software technologies such as application programming interfaces (APIs). And they deftly combine these hard aspects with soft behavioural factors such as emotional energy, human creative thinking and responsible control over AI."-- "Quy Huy, Professor of Strategy, INSEAD"

"This book provides hands-on guidance on how platform strategies, combined with the forces of data and AI, will create a competitive edge for companies regardless of industry. The authors' combination of research and in-depth experience provides leaders with the sense of urgency needed to be a winner in the future. Regardless of sector, companies will need the confidence to cooperate in smart and open eco-systems and thereby create greater outcomes together with partners. I especially appreciated the human-centric view on leadership and organizational impact to simplify governance and speed up the transformation for the benefits of customers, employees and society at large. Read it!"-- "Lundstedt Martin, CEO, Volvo Group"

"To build a successful platform and business takes actions in the right sequence to truly benefit and delight your customers and business partners. The seven steps Ojanperä and Vuori outline provide a travel guide for this journey. Starting with energy, create value with focus, and ultimately multiply the benefits by creating the unexpected."-- "Christian Von Reventlow, CTO or Myrepublic and Former Chief Product Officer, Telstra and Detsche Telekom"

About the Author

Dr Tero Ojanperä is a world-renowned technology business leader. The co-founder of Silo AI, one of Europe's largest private AI labs, he is an investor and venture capitalist. Fast Company crowned him the seventh most creative person in business and he is a Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum. He lives in Helsinki, Finland.
Prof Timo O. Vuori is a strategy consultant and professor at Aalto University, a Financial Times top 40 business school. Timo helps companies formulate and execute strategies, helping them transform into intelligent platforms. He lives in Helsinki, Finland.