On Platform and Ecosystem Thinking

  1. Quote: "The day that a company defines itself as a “product-based” or in general when it attaches itself too much to what is currently providing to the market it's making a very problematic mistake. We know that today the market is becoming more and more defined by ecosystems, therefore a company's mission is to find ecosystems to support, nurture help thrive and emerge, often it's a calling more than an opportunity." [1]
  2. Learning: Designing new platforms and open business models is crucial for both businesses and society. This transition to "boundaryless" thinking creates a new, challenging landscape shaped by unpredictable and uncertain ecosystems. [2]
  3. Quote: "Platform thinking is a way to organize value creation at scale for a particular ecosystem of interacting entities."
  4. Learning: Platform strategies are comprised of two main engines: a transaction engine (like a marketplace) and a learning engine, which provides services for the growth and improvement of all entities within the ecosystem.
  5. Quote: "As power shifts from the organization to the ecosystem, any organization needs to learn how to be worth existing: the only way to be as such is to make the ecosystem achieve its relational and learning potential faster, sustaining scalable relationships and providing opportunities and support services for scalable learning. That's what a platform strategy is all about." [3]
  6. Learning: Complex systemic challenges, from healthcare resilience to climate adaptation, have outgrown the capacity of any single organization to solve alone, necessitating system-level coordination tools. [4]
  7. Quote: "In a world where sustainable competitive advantage is lost forever, we really need to learn to think about strategies that work for all the players in a certain industry or market. With this approach a crazy opportunity opens up for an organization that is ecosystem mindful: that to become the shaper, and the enabler of whole systems." [5]
  8. Learning: The "Cicero Triangle" provides a framework for understanding the three key layers of a platformized market: infrastructures (basic modularized services), aggregators (which connect with the market), and the long tail of producers and consumers. [6]

On Organizational Transformation and the Future of Work

  1. Quote: "To really get the best of the opportunities of the age of networks, organizations must transform accordingly, embracing a network structure." [1]
  2. Learning: The future of organizing is not something that just "happens," but something that is actively created through our participation in the economy, society, and our communities. [1]
  3. Quote: "There's no more an inside or outside to a company, an organization or a brand, and that strategy must be seen more as boundary-less and as a continuum."
  4. Learning: Organizations need to move away from bureaucracy and hierarchy, replacing them with small, entrepreneurial units supported internally by platforms. [2]
  5. Quote: "The future is between 'no more' and 'not yet' – we must create something different for and in this emergent space, embrace the nexus, accept radical change, be positive players and cease to defend the 'no more'." [2]
  6. Learning: Monolithic, vertically integrated organizations struggle to cope with the rapid change, user-drivenness, and evolution of today's markets. [7]
  7. Quote: "A truly post-industrial and boundaryless organization is then designed (potentially by the system) to actualize the system. It generates outcomes that are in the interest of the collective subjectivity that calls the organization into existence to solve collective challenges." [8]
  8. Learning: The future-proof enterprise must become a platform for value creation and exchange, looking at co-production with its community in addition to traditional employment. [9]
  9. Quote: "Companies can no longer act as monolithic, centralized, revenue-generating machines. Instead, they must become inclusive, create shared value, and thrive amidst radical change." [9]

On Strategy and Design

  1. Learning: Scoping and setting boundaries for a platform or ecosystem strategy is an extremely challenging task because, in reality, no firm boundaries exist anymore; strategy must be seen as a continuum.
  2. Quote: "Platform thinking is very powerful when it comes to creating new business because if you approach an opportunity with platform ecosystem in mind, you have to design a little bit more. So it's shifting the investment from creating tools of resources into envisioning, understanding what work you need to design, instead of putting things on the market with no traction with the ecosystem." [10]
  3. Learning: When designing for complex ecosystems, it's crucial to accept that while the scope can be wide, you can start by prioritizing a few points of view and iterating, as this is how you explore complex systems.
  4. Quote: "We are remixing ideas, we are not inventing anything. On the other hand, by creating open-source tools and releasing all our knowledge in the commons, we are somehow pushed to climb the value chain, so we are also pushed to design ourselves as a platform." [10]
  5. Learning: Partnership strategy should be a core part of the initial business design, not an afterthought or just a sales channel. It is fundamental to how a business delivers value. [11]
  6. Quote: "Governance models need to evolve to cope first, overlap then, and eventually merge with business models." [5]

The 7 Key Principles of Platform Design

  1. Learning: Principle #1 - Recognize the potential that grows at the Edge. The most important principle is acknowledging that small entities (individuals, teams) have an increasing potential to create powerful products and services. [12]
  2. Learning: Principle #2 - Design for Emergence & Interconnectedness. Platforms should be designed to allow for unplanned and emergent behaviors, fostering a rich web of interconnections.
    • Source: This is a core principle from Simone Cicero's work, often discussed in his workshops and writings.
  3. Learning: Principle #3 - Design for Devolution, Self-organization & Disobedience. Platforms should empower participants with autonomy, allowing them to self-organize and even "disobey" rigid structures to find new value. [5]
  4. Learning: Principle #4 - Enable Continuous Learning. In a world defined by Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA), every organization is in the learning business, and platforms must be engines for continuous learning. [12]
  5. Learning: Principle #5 - Nurture the ecosystem. A platform designer's role is akin to a gardener, nurturing the ecosystem to allow for creative entropy and unintended (but potentially valuable) growth.
  6. Learning: Principle #6 - Think in terms of Systems. Move beyond linear thinking and understand the organization and its market as a complex system of interconnected elements and relationships. [2]
  7. Learning: Principle #7 - Let go of identity, identify with the whole. To truly shape an ecosystem, organizations may need to let go of their rigid brand identity to avoid being perceived as a competitor by the very participants they want to attract. [12]

On Mindset and Culture

  1. Quote: "Companies can use the platform design toolkit primarily to install a certain type of mindset in their workforce: this different way to look at things, allows employees see through boundaries, siloes." [1]
  2. Learning: Many companies suffer from the "NAH (Not Applicable Here) syndrome," creating an alibi for not adopting platform strategies, even though the underlying mechanisms are pervasive across all industries. [1]
  3. Quote: "Nothing is holding us back if not our lack of sovereignty as individuals, organizations and communities. We often rush around and behind the usual without even trying to find a moment to redraw our priorities. Now it's time to do it!" [1]
  4. Learning: Building a positive narrative of transformation is crucial for organizations to move from a reactive and anxious state to a proactive and excited one when adopting platform-ecosystem thinking.
  5. Quote: "We must rethink our entire society, e.g. transport, food and energy supply and consumption, sustainability, accountability for wider issues, increase cooperation between organisations and citizen-led groups." [2]
  6. Learning: Western executives are often more concerned with numbers and shareholder expectations, whereas a more ecosystemic approach concentrates on unlocking the potential of people and the entire ecosystem.
  7. Quote: "Companies often lack focusing on experimentation and continuous learning, which is instead something that seems the real focus of Haier and Zhang for the last 30 years."
  8. Learning: The company of tomorrow will need to create unique, non-commodifiable value built around trustful relationships with its community, which will outlast any temporary competitive advantage. [9]

On the Platform Design Toolkit (PDT)

  1. Learning: The Platform Design Toolkit was created in 2013 as a fork of the Business Model Canvas to model the emerging business of multi-sided platforms that connect supply and demand. [1]
  2. Quote: "The toolkit is not the point of the discussion, it's really just a shared language that we use to have a conversation of how things are changing."
  3. Learning: The Platform Design Toolkit is based on the tradition of Business Modeling, Service Design Thinking, and Lean Thinking, providing a unified view optimized for platforms and ecosystems. [13]
  4. Quote: "Formally... the toolkit can help you formulate a systemic, strategic, bold vision of the market or context you want to shape, and then help you move into validation interviews and MVP quite fast." [5]
  5. Learning: The ultimate aim of the Platform Design Toolkit is to help users develop a clear, shared strategic vision and identify the first version of the platform to build for learning and validation. [13]

Broader Reflections

  1. Quote: "The industrial age is gone, forever." [3]
  2. Learning: We need to find new ways to have a conversation on organizational development that is not "colonialist, neither industrial." [13]
  3. Quote: "The boundaryless organization IS the system. It will solidify inter-relationship and understand inter-dependence." [8]
  4. Learning: There is a pressing need for organizations to adopt new models that resonate with the world, focusing more on narratives and less on boundaries, embracing small entrepreneurial teams, radical openness, and collaboration. [3]
  5. Quote: "Every company should try to design itself as a platform. Individuals could also think of themselves as platforms: facilitating relationships between others in our personal ecosystem (connecting), and supporting other's learning, through our own activities."
  6. Learning: A key mission for post-industrial organizations is to actualize the creative potential of individuals and communities in a rapidly changing world, where exploration is needed at an unprecedented scale and speed. [8]
  7. Quote: "Give up competitive advantage. Embrace change, don't fear it. Create an empathic relationship with the community. Create hackable products and services." [9]

Learn more:

  1. “The Rules of Platform Design” – An Interview with Simone Cicero - The Marketing Journal
  2. Platform-ecosystem thinking : the move to more networked organisations with Simone Cicero - Transform for Value
  3. A Management Idea to Watch in 2020 | by Simone Cicero - Stories of Platform Design
  4. When Challenges Outgrow Single Organizations: from Platform Thinking to Ecosystem Orchestration - Boundaryless
  5. Embracing Platform Design: a Conversation from the Trenches | by Simone Cicero
  6. The Key Concepts in Platform Design - Boundaryless
  7. Contracts and the Future of the Firm | by Simone Cicero | Stories of Platform Design
  8. Platforms for a Post-Industrial Civilization | by Simone Cicero
  9. The future-proof entreprise - par Simone Cicero - Ouishare
  10. Remixing the Principles of Platform Design, with Simone Cicero - Vivaldi Group
  11. Extending the Platform Organization Through Partnerships | by Simone Cicero
  12. The 7 Key Principles of Platform Design | by Simone Cicero
  13. Navigating Platform Design Toolkit | by Simone Cicero