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The recent tidal wave of digital technological transformation has set a new scene within which businesses communicate and form relationships with their customers. To capture the business impacts of developmental technologies such as mobile networks, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, a paper by Ikeda and Marshall (2018) aims to examine the online strategies that companies can use to make competitive progress within their markets. The paper achieves this by presenting steps to assist businesses in the process of determining their own digital platform strategy.
A thirst for platforms
Platform strategies have become coveted by CEOs the world over, in the wake of colossal platform-based success stories such as Airbnb. A 2018 survey by IBM of executive leaders reveals that 46 per cent of them aspire to tap into the potential of a platform strategy. Yet, platform strategies are not devoid of challenges, as the process of building and testing a platform requires a huge investment of time and money, and then at the end of the process, the offering may elicit a cold reaction from the target customer audience. A balancing exercise of opportunity versus risk must therefore be embraced by anyone embarking upon platform creation, as no participant in this aspirational journey is immune from failure. Even a successfully operating platform can be marred by the associated risks of security breaches, data loss, and increased regulation.
Four streams of transformational change
The paper identifies the following four interconnected streams of transformational change that underpin the formation of a company’s digital strategy:
Customer experience – A successful customer experience is made up of smooth and immediately supplied stimulation that is...