A Practitioner's Guide to Digital Platform Business

This book is a practitioner's guide to digital business models for entrepreneurs, business executives, MBA and undergraduate students. Balancing both frameworks and real-life case studies, it provides readers with the tools for creating successful businesses in the digital age, while at the same time serving as a cautionary tale for those who value businesses by the technology they wield and not the strategies they execute.

The business landscape in the last decade was surreal — exhilaration, fear, opportunities, threats, all rolled into one messy landscape. Never before had the world seen disruptions of such unprecedented speed, scope, and scale. Many business leaders were ready to pounce on the new opportunities, but most ended up defeated. They had not anticipated that most disruptive businesses used digital strategies and a small talent pool to sidestep the traditional competencies that mega-corporations had needed decades to build with legions of employees.

The core technologies that power the businesses of today's digital giants still revolve around the internet, data, and computing resources. The sudden disruptions to the business landscape is better explained by the ability of digital businesses to further capitalize on the existing technological advancements.