In today’s business world, no company is an island. Straightforward supply chains of yesterday have given way to interconnected industry ecosystems. Platforms emerge, and with them, platform leaders, who drive coalitions of firms which innovate around a platform. Platforms are essential industry “building blocks” which attract other firms’ investment and innovation on add-on products or services. To compete and win in these ecosystems, firms need to learn new strategies.
Open to all researchers who are interested in platform issues, this event will also be of interest to business leaders from innovation-intensive industries.
Conference themes:
- Platform dynamics in a variety of industries
- The management of product platform development projects
- Platforms in products vs. platforms in services
- Double-sided markets
- Knowledge management in platforms
- Recent advances in modularity literature
- Examination of existing literature and appropriate methodologies for research on platforms
- Interaction between product or service architecture and industry architecture
- Platforms as institutions
- The management of product platform development projects
Conference Agenda
This one-day event, held at Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London, will begin with an academic conference. This will be followed by an open session where business practitioners can discuss – with academic specialists – the future impact of platform research on business strategy and implementation.
Contributors
The conference develops themes from the forthcoming book, Platforms, Markets, and Innovation, edited by Dr. Annabelle Gawer (to be published by Edward Elgar in 2009), which presents new contributions from leading academic voices of this field, from strategy, management, innovation, marketing, economics, organizations and regulation.
Presenters provisionally include: C. Baldwin (HBS) and J. Woodward (Singapore M. U.), T. Eisenmann (HBS), Mari Sako (Oxford), A. Gawer (Imperial College London), S. Greenstein (Northwestern), M. Cusumano (MIT) and F. Suarez (Boston U.), M. Schilling (NYU), M. Jacobides (LBS), F. Tell and R. Yakob (Linkoping U, Sweden), D. Evans (LECG and MPD), A. Hatchuel, B. Weil and P. Le Masson (Ecole des Mines, Paris), S. Brusoni (Bocconi U.) and A. Prencipe (Sussex SPRU), T. Fujimoto and H. Tasumoto (U of Tokyo), K. Boudreau (HEC) and A. Hagiu (HBS).
How to register
The conference is open and free of charge, but registration will be required. For further information, or to register, please contact Shelley Meehan at s.meehan@imperial.ac.uk.