This article provides an encyclopedic survey of the platform strategy literature and is organized around launch strategies, governance, and competition. A platform strategy is the mobilization of a networked business platform to expand into and operate in a given market. A business platform, in...

An increasingly common practice among media platforms is to provide premium content versions with fewer or even no ads. This practice leads to an intriguing question: how should ad-financed media price discriminate through versioning? I develop a two-sided media model and illustrate that price...

This paper presents a model in which a monopoly platform not only operates a marketplace intermediating direct transactions between consumers and third-party sellers, but also sells its first-party products at the marketplace, which is designated herein as platform encroachment. When...

We consider a heretofore unexplored explanation for why platforms, such as Internet service providers, might impose download limits on content consumers: doing so increases the degree to which those consumers view content providers products as substitutes. This, in turn, intensifies competition...

We consider a heretofore unexplored explanation for why platforms, such as Internet service providers and mobile-phone networks, offer plans with download limits: through one of two mechanisms, doing so causes the providers of the content consumer purchase to either reduce their prices or...

The benefits consumers get from a mobile phone depend on the software apps available to use on that phone. These indirect network effects are especially important since apps are specific to a platform (e.g., iOS or Android) and are often not available on all platforms at once. We measure the...

The purpose of this chapter is to use the theory of bottlenecks laid out in previous chapters to better understand the dynamics of an open standards-based platform. I describe how the Wintel platform evolved from 1990 through 2000 under joint sponsorship of Intel and Microsoft. I first describe...

Free!! Google and Facebook!!! We all know them, what to worry about? Everything! The giants of the internet are expanding into every corner of the economy, politics and our lives. They control the majority of digital advertising; Alphabet, Google's parent, and Facebook receive more than 60...

Free!! Google and Facebook!!! We all know them, what to worry about? Everything! The giants of the internet are expanding into every corner of the economy, politics and our lives. They control the majority of digital advertising; Alphabet, Google's parent, and Facebook receive more than 60...

The study generalizes the structure of network effects that is the defining feature of platforms. By adapting graph theory and the micro-foundation from Ballester et al. (2006), I discuss the monetization strategy for platforms that confront the demand with pair-wised network effects (e.g....