In The Trenches

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 whic