Ep.16 Marshall Van Alstyne and Geoffrey Parker - Human Value as the North Star: Regulating pervasive platforms

In this episode we have two leading platform thinkers on the show: Marshall Van Alstyne, Questrom Chair Professor at Boston University and Geoffrey Parker, professor of engineering at the Thayer School of Dartmouth College. They are both visiting scholars at the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy and co-chair the annual MIT Platform Summit (see references below)

Marshall Van Alstyne and Geoffrey Parker - together with Sangeet Choudary - are the authors of Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy - and How to Make Them Work for You, from 2016. As originators of the concept of the inverted firm, they were further joint winners of the Thinkers50 2019 Digital Thinking Award. 

In this conversation, we talk about what democratising access to data means for the ability of players in a platform-ecosystem context to innovate and how regulation should be conceived participatory and ex ante. With creating human value as the North star, Marshall and Geoffrey ponder that we might want to see the creation of a Magna Carta of citizens rights for how we should be able to operate and influence on powerful platforms.

Remember that you can find the show notes and transcripts from all our episodes on our own Medium publication. 

 

Here are some important links from the conversation:

 

Find out more about Marshall and Geoffrey’s work

> Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary, Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You, 2016. https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Revolution-Networked-Markets-Transforming/dp/0393249131

> MIT Platform Strategy Summit, 2020 edition taking place virtually on 8 July: http://ide.mit.edu/events/2020-mit-platform-strategy-summit

> Platform Revolution - Offers an operator's manual for building platforms (easy read)  https://www.amazon.com/Platform-Revolution-Networked-Markets-Transforming/dp/0393354350/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1591806248&sr=1-1

> Digital Platforms & Antitrust - Categorizes the harms from platforms, critiques existing solutions, and offers one path forward (easy read).  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3608397

> Pipelines, Platforms & New The Rules of Strategy - Tells how strategy differs from products to platforms (Harvard Business Review "Must Read" - easy read).  https://hbr.org/2016/04/pipelines-platforms-and-the-new-rules-of-strategy

> Platform Ecosystems: How Developers Invert the Firm - Provides a proof that platforms become "inverted firms," moving production from inside to outside, once network effects become large enough (MISQ Best Paper - hard read). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2861574 

> The Social Efficiency of Fairness - Provides proof that treating people fairly increases rates of innovation (mimeo - hard read)  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1514137

 

Other mentions and references

>  Simon Wardley on the Innovate-Leverage-Componentize (ILC) cycle. 

Part I: https://blog.gardeviance.org/2014/03/understanding-ecosystems-part-i-of-ii.html; 

Part II: https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/08/on-platforms-and-ecosystems.html

> Simone Cicero, “Long Tails, Aggregators & Infrastructures”: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/long-tails-aggregators-infrastructures-bdf84e32531d

> Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, “5 Economists Redefining… Everything. Oh Yes, And They’re Women”. Mariana Mazzucato on the role of government investment in early innovations: https://www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/05/31/5-economi