Brown Bag: Prof. Michael A. Cusumano

The Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation of Prof. Georg von Krogh invites you to a brownbag seminar with:

Professor Michael A. Cusumano
MIT Sloan School of Management

Thursday 26 September 2019: 09:30-10:00 Coffee and croissants, 10:00-11:30 Seminar and discussion
Room LEE E 101, Leonhardstrasse 21, Zurich
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The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power
This lecture covers key principles behind platform businesses, as discussed in a new book co-authored by Michael Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer, and David Yoffie titled “The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power.” This lecture will reveal why creating and managing platform companies is different from traditional product or service businesses, and why some markets lead to spectacular winner-take-all-or-most outcomes. The authors define platforms as businesses that connect two or more market actors, with much of their growth dependent on “network effects.” The study also analyzed data on publicly listed platform companies going back twenty years. Platforms had comparable revenues to peer companies in the same industries but had half the number of employees, twice the operating profits, and much higher market values and growth rates. However, many platform ventures failed before becoming large public firms, and many platform companies, despite multi-billion-dollar valuations, still fail to make any profit. Nonetheless, the most successful platforms, led by Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet-Google, have become the most valuable companies in the world. These and other companies represent two types of platforms: One type are innovation platforms, like Google Android, Apple iOS, Microsoft Windows, or Amazon Web Services, which connect billions of smartphone and computer users to complementary innovations produced by thousands of companies around the world. The second type are transaction platforms, like Google Search, Baidu Search, Amazon Marketplace, Facebook, Taobao (Alibaba), WeChat (Tencent), Uber, Didi Chuxing, or Airbnb, which connect billions of buyers, renters, or seekers of information to millions of sellers, asset owners, or advertisers. The most valuable companies are actually “hybrids” and operate both types of platforms, which makes them strategically complex as well as difficult for regulators to understand. The authors also argue that platforms are “double-edged swords,” with an equal ability to organize economic activity efficiently as well as to abuse their powerful market and social positions or be subject to misuse by platform participants.

About the speaker
Michael A. Cusumano is the SMR Distinguished Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During 2016-17, he was Vice President and Dean at Tokyo University of Science and Founding Director of the Tokyo Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center, established with support from the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship & Innovation Program (MIT REAP). Professor Cusumano specializes in strategy, product development, and entrepreneurship in computer software and Internet services as well as automobiles and consumer electronics. At MIT, he teaches Software & Internet Entrepreneurship as well as Advanced Strategic Management. Professor Cusumano was educated at Princeton University and Harvard University (PhD and postdoctoral fellowship in Production & Operations Management). He has lived in Japan for more than eight years, published 14 books and more than 120 articles, and has consulted for approximately 100 companies around the world. He also has served and continues to serve as a director and advisor of several public and private companies, including Ferratum Group (Finland), Orix Corporation and Fixstars (Japan), and Zylotech (USA). His most recent book is The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power (2019, with Annabelle Gawer and David Yoffie). His prior book, Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs (2015, with David Yoffie), has been translated into 18 foreign languages.


We look forward to welcoming you!

Kind regards,
The Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation

Upcoming SMI Brownbag Seminars
20 November: Marvin Lieberman, UCLA
11 December: Brian Pentland, Michigan State University