The Platform Design
Toolkit User Guide
page 1
Release note updates
Document Release Date March 2021
Version 2.2.1
Description of the This updated release of the User Guide connects better with the
Release contextually released (march 2021) Platform Opportunity
Exploration Guide.
Main elements characterizing this release:
- a further example is provided (prosumer solar energy) that
helps the reader weave the whole process;
- a newly packaged set of related canvases available in the
companion download pack (advanced canvases have been
eliminated, the relevant ones moved to the Platform
Opportunity Exploration guide).
Related Documents The Platform Opportunity Exploration Guide
Based on Platform 2.2
Design Toolkit Version
License This work is open source, and is released by Boundaryless S.r.l.
under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).
A copy of this license is available here:
[Link]
If you’re in doubt on what you can or cannot do based on this
license please reach out to hello@[Link]
page 2
Foreword
Dear reader,
this is the User Guide for adopting the Platform Design Toolkit, a design framework that
one can use to envision, develop and roll out platform strategies that mobilize ecosystems.
The toolkit is essentially made of a set of design canvases, plus additional resources like
the User Guide that you are reading right now.1
In this document, we present a widely tested approach to the use of these canvases to
explore a strategic design challenge: building a strategy that mobilizes an ecosystem
through new platform experiences.
Although it’s clear that there’s no inherent usefulness in filling up a canvas, we believe—
and our adopters made it clear countless times—that this methodology helps you to get
quicker to a shared idea and support you in the execution, always a key challenge beyond
design.
In this User Guide, we propose one possible way to organize the work around the
canvases: we hope that by following a step-by-step process you will soon feel confident to
explore other ways to use the framework, ways that you find more relevant to your case.
Please reach out to us to share your insights!
Our growing Community of Practice is where our adopters share and co-evolve the
methodology and its different uses.
We truly believe that everything is a remix, and that’s why we made this toolkit open
source, and easy to use so that anyone can feel free to change it and adapt it to their own
style by following the CC-BY-SA 4.0 Licence.
Kindly,
the Platform Design Toolkit team.
1
To complement this introduction you can read our orientation post:
!"#$%&#'%(&)*)+,#'-./0)123%&()4..,5%'6)7)#$#%,#8,2)#')[Link]
page 3
Special Acknowledgments
Many people and contexts contributed ideas and gave us inspiration for building this
toolkit.
The Platform Design Toolkit team wants to explicitly thank a few special ones:
● Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur and Strategizer AG for having created the amazing
Business Model Canvas and the knowledge around it.
● Dave Gray and XPlane for the Empathy map and the Gamestorming library.
● Ezio Manzini for his seminal work in Service Design (and the motivations matrix!).
● Steve Blank and Eric Ries for being such a source of inspiration towards
experimenting, and learning with Customer Development and Lean Startup.
● John Hagel III for giving us the lenses to look at the modern complexity of digital
industries.
● Michel Bauwens for pioneering the study of Peer to Peer modes of production and
the Commons.
We owe a lot to many, especially to our growing Community of Practice.
A sincere thanks to all who contribute knowledge in the open!
page 4
Table of Content
The PLATFORM DESIGN TOOLKIT
USER GUIDE
Release note updates 0
Foreword 2
Special Acknowledgments 3
Table of Content 4
Introduction 6
A methodological note: Design for Ecosystems 7
The Phases of Platform Design 8
Box 1: The Platform Opportunity Exploration Guide 8
Box 2: Platform Growth Guide and Course in the making 9
The Contexts of Platform Design 10
A. Ecosystem Mobilization 10
B. Product & Service Innovation 11
Platform Design Glossary 13
The Entities in the Ecosystem 15
IMPACT Entities 16
PLATFORM OWNERS (or SHAPERS) [PO] 16
EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS [ES] 17
DEMAND Entities 17
PEER CONSUMERS [PC] 17
SUPPLY Entities 18
PEER PRODUCERS [PP] 18
PARTNERS [PA] 19
The two key engines of Platform Design 20
The Step by Step Platform Strategy Design Process 21
Box 3: PDT Digital Canvases on Miro 22
1 Mapping the Ecosystem 23
2 Portraying Ecosystem’s Entities-Roles 25
3 Analyzing the Motivations to Exchange Value 28
4 Choosing the Core Relationships you want to Focus on 31
5 Identifying Elementary Transactions & Channels 33
6 Designing the Learning Engine 36
7 Assembling Platform Experiences 39
8 Setting up the Minimum Viable Platform 44
CLOSING NOTES 48
Training Opportunities 49
page 5
Thanks! 49
page 6
Introduction
Before you begin with the hands-on step by step process we suggest you get familiar with some key notions
and concepts of platform design.
This introductory part contains some essential elements you need to be familiar with before starting your
journey:
● a methodological note, introducing the concept of designing FOR ecosystems and the main
contexts of Platform Design;
● a recap of the phases of the Platform Design process to help you situate this guide and the Platform
Strategy design process described in this guide more widely in the platform design process
● a note on the contexts of Platform Design;
● a glossary of the keywords we use in Platform Design;
● a description of the key roles that we use to model all the entities around Platform Design;
● a description of the two key engines of Platform Design.
page 7
A methodological note: Design for Ecosystems
The more we run Platform Design workshops, the more we realize one thing: the most challenging
moments always come at the beginning, when the team needs to figure out the scope of application of the
methodology.
Scoping, setting the point of view and delimiting the opportunity we’re addressing with a platform — an
ecosystem mobilization strategy — is an extremely challenging task.
One of the key points to understand is that we are designing for ecosystems: that the focus of our design
strategy is external, it’s IN the Ecosystem, not inside our team, company or institution.
On the other hand, we also need to
acknowledge that the difference
between inside and outside may be
more blurred than in the past: the
very effort of trying to set a
boundary to a design opportunity
doesn’t make much sense anymore.
We always come to point out to the
teams that work with us that
there’s no more an inside or an
outside to a company, organization
or a brand, and that strategy must
be seen more as boundary-less and
as a continuum (inside, at the edge
and outside, the blurring context).
This enormous, boundary-less
potential, on the other hand, must
push us to accept that — while the design scope might be wide — we need to begin by prioritizing and
focusing on few points of view, and progressively iterate the approach at later times. That’s how you can
tackle a complex design.
page 8
The Phases of Platform Design
The work of a platform shaper can be roughly framed in four macro phases:
The step-by-step instructions contained in this User Guide will mainly revolve around phase 2. and 3.
1. Exploration – in this phase, a shaper understands the existing context, as well as the strategic meaning
and applicability of a platform strategy that could impact, shape and influence the context. The key question
that is asked in this phase is: “What could be a fruitful context where we can apply a platform strategy, given our
position in the ecosystem, our assets, and specificities as an organization or team?”
Box 1: The Platform Opportunity Exploration Guide
The exploration phase is not covered by this user guide which focuses on the Strategy Design and Validation phase.
You can learn more about the Exploration Phase with the recently released Platform Opportunity Exploration
Guide. To know more about how we approach exploration, please refer to:
● “Platform Opportunity Exploration Guide” [Link]
● “12 Patterns of Platform Design to kickstart Innovation Strategies.” [Link]
● “Exploring Ecosystems: The Patterns of Platformization.” [Link]
2. Strategy Design – in this phase, the platform shaper maps and clusters existing entities, understands
their individual context and explores the potential they have to exchange value among them. Eventually, the
platform shaper designs the two key platform engines (the Transactions Engine and the Learning Engine) and
selects a high potential platform experience– along with its sustainability model (business model)– that can be
brought to the context and iteratively validated with the ecosystem (see next phase: Validation and
Prototyping).
3. Validation and Prototyping – in this phase the shaper conducts a series of interviews (this could
also partially happen during the design phase, and is generally an iterative process) to get feedback on the
riskiest assumptions in the design. Later the shaper makes actual MVPs (or just runs experiments, or builds
prototypes) that are focused to validate or invalidate the assumptions in real life.
4. Growth Hacking – after the validation has happened, the shaper applies tactics to help the strategy
grow in the context (being it a market, or something different). By growing the supply and demand side of the
system, generating network effects, the strategy becomes more relevant and valuable.
page 9
Box 2: Platform Growth Guide and Course in the making
The growth hacking phase is not covered by this user guide, as it’s still an experimental framework we’re building.
This upcoming integration to the Platform Design Toolkit will include a new Guide and a new Learning experience
on Growth, Network Effects and Defensibility that will also cover the “product” side of a Platform-Marketplace
Strategy. Stay tune by subscribing here: [Link]
To know more about how we approach growth hacking, please refer to the below selection of blog posts:
● The New Growth Landscape [Link]
page 10
The Contexts of Platform Design
In our direct experience with hundreds of customers two typical contexts of innovating business models
are recurring and can be framed by looking at Cicero’s triangle. The first approach is what we call
“Ecosystem Mobilization” and is about exploring the market - or more generally the ecosystem - seeking new
opportunities that aren’t necessarily related to an existing business line, product or service that the
organization provides already . The second, that we call “Product and Services Innovation” normally starts by
the idea of evolving, extending and integrating an existing organizational offering that the organization is
already strong with.
A. Ecosystem Mobilization
In this common context of application of platform
thinking the organization is looking to shape and
mobilize an existing ecosystem with a new
platform strategy. As we often say, Platform
Design is heavily rooted in the observation of the
emergent: you actually can’t design a strategy for an
ecosystem that doesn’t exist (where exists = already
trying to create and exchange value).
The analogy useful to explain the nonsense (i.e.
design a new ecosystem), if you’re familiar with
the lean thinking approach, would be designing a
solution for an inexistent problem: who would do
that?
This consideration is at the core of this first context of applicability: if you see that value is being created
and traded in a certain Ecosystem, space, or market (or any other social context that you don’t normally call
like that, can be for example your organization or your space of impact, in a non-profit context); if you see
producers and consumers of value that are organizing around value creation, and you think this market
(context) is performing below its potential, then this context is perfectly worth of organizing through a
platform strategy that amplifies its potential. We call this context of application, ecosystem mobilization.
This is a typical approach that we consider as a transformative or radical innovation approach in
traditional strategic terms as the organization is trying to create a new set of products and services to
mobilize customers in a market that it normally doesn’t serve. In this context the aim of the organization -
as we’ll see below - is to leverage on existing assets and capabilities to gain advantage, and provide relevant
services to an existing ecosystem that - most likely and hopefully - has not been mobilized yet by any other
platform shaper. This is normally the context of most of the traditional marketplace “startup” initiatives;
but we are in this case even where the organization is leveraging its assets and capabilities to explore other
markets. As an example, if an organization is capable of providing the best in class expertise on dealing with
complex mission critical systems’ maintenance in the aviation industry, a subset of its capabilities can be
used to shaper a similar (in terms of needs) industry, like the Civil Railways transportation, or Hospitals
facilities management, etc. In that case we should probably consider this an adjacent innovation context
page 11
(addressing different markets by leveraging on existing capabilities), but it’s not the point of this guide to
seek for a perfect framing strategy jargon-wise of such approaches.
B. Product & Service Innovation
Another recurring case is that of an existing
player trying to - instead - use a platform approach
to organize a larger ecosystem of interactions that
is already insisting on products and services that
the organization already provides.
In this case, there’s already an ecosystem of
entities using the product or service as a
component of a value chain. So, the opportunity
here is to move towards higher values systems:
the platform shaper might want to better organize
this ecosystem, facilitating higher value
interactions. It’s then about product/service innovation through platformization.
This is a typical approach that leads to adjacent innovation in typical strategic thinking: the organization
that provides the already known product or service is looking for another - similar - market that can benefit
from its current offerings (the latter can be then updated, extended or modified to better fit the new
market) and provide the ecosystem with the infrastructure, components and services that help the
ecosystem to grow. The driver here is the understanding of the current value chain, and its integration by
providing higher value services to the entities, reducing the cost of transacting, offering better services and
products. In this way the shaper can provide new niche experiences and help third parties in its ecosystem
to grow as well, creating solid defensibility for its core services, now embedded in the third parties’
business process.
Such an approach works well when organizations are capable of looking at the whole value chain beyond
their existing products: as an example financial institutions are often aware that their customers are not
looking for a loan or a mortgage per se, but more as a mean to achieve a life defining event such as moving
to a new city to follow a career opportunity: that is the real value they are sensitive to. If this organization
wants to climb the value chain, this is where it needs to go to leverage the ecosystem. Facilitating such an
experience of “relocating to a new city and changing house” through a platform strategy that orchestrates
all players involved is far more valuable than the single mortgage approval. If you’re producing sports gear,
your customers are not interested in owning that specific product (a tennis racket, a smartwatch) but in
using them to improve their performance, stay healthy, and have fun with friends.
If we look at the mentioned contexts a bit more broadly, we can quickly understand that there’s a third
(shadow) context that is somehow mixed with the two. Indeed, there’s always an existing organization that:
● works as a complex network of interactions between internal and external entities (therefore
being partially overlapped with the concept of an ecosystem);
● produces a certain process or product (subject to the process/service innovation context).
page 12
The inextricable mix between the platformization contexts and the organizational one is a teller of how
difficult to separate organizations from products, and organizations from ecosystems.
Today, the boundaries between the inside and the outside of an organization — and even between a product
or service, and the organization that runs it — are disappearing. Think of Airbnb as an example: where does
the organization ends and the brand, experience, or ecosystem starts? Hard to tell.2
To understand better how to address this initial moment of understanding the context of the opportunity
the reader should refer to Boundaryless’ Platform Opportunity Exploration Framework and Guide.
2
For specific implementation of organizational transformations according to the principles of platform thinking,
check the EEEO initiative: Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Enabling Organization 3EO Toolkit based on Haier's
Rendanheyi.
page 13
Platform Design Glossary
Here you find a glossary with some of the most recurring words we use in platform design. We suggest you
get familiar with these notions as they will be useful while going through the step by step process.
Canvas — A design canvas is a pre-formatted sheet of paper that enables a group of people to work and
think together, as well as having structured conversations around a series of key topics to ultimately
produce a shared vision and rich knowledge output. In our workshops, we use design canvases to help the
team members to apply step by step our platform design approach, get insights together and share
outcomes clearly with their stakeholders.
Platform Design Brief — A Design brief is a document for a design project developed by a person or team
(the 'designer' or 'design team'). The brief outlines the scope of the platformization project including initial
insights and element of the initial vision.
Platform (strategy) — a strategy, run by a "platform shaper" that wants to mobilize and help an ecosystem
in creating value, with the aim of capturing part of this value. A platform strategy is made of a combination
of different elements: narrative, technologies, rules, channels, contexts, enabling services, protocols and
more.
Ecosystem — a set of entities playing in a context (e.g. a sector, an industry, a market, an organization)
interacting and exchanging value, leveraging resources, generating outcomes. We often use “system” as an
alternative to “ecosystem”. Note that contexts often overlap and boundaries of ecosystems are hard to
define.
Entity — an individual, economic and social actor with specific objectives. It can be a person, an
organization, an institution, a team.
Role— in platform thinking, defining a role is a way to cluster several kinds of entities into the same
category of players, primarily according to how much they share motivations to join, assets and capabilities
(resources that they can leverage) and type of value exchanges they're looking for. Clustering entities into
roles help you to apply platform thinking. As an example, modeling a healthcare platform-ecosystem, to
facilitate booking and consumption of medical advice, one could model a general practitioner (GP) or a
specialist under the same role of “medical professional” or “healthcare service provider”.
Transaction— a transaction is an interaction between two entities. It happens in a channel or context and it
involves an exchange of value units between the two entities. Transactions are already happening even
before we deploy our platform strategy, however, the more the channel is well designed to reduce the
coordination/transaction cost the more of these kinds of transactions will happen easily. A good
transaction is simple, elementary, ‘atomic’. It is something easily repeatable, like filling out a contact form.
Incentive— one of the main pillars of designing and deploying a platform strategy is to deeply understand
what would be the incentives we foresee for every entity to join our platform strategy. Usually, incentives
have to do with everything that addresses the entities' performance pressures, life goals or generates more
convenience for them. The more we understand incentives, the more likely is that they would embrace the
"new rules of the game" embedded in our platform strategy.
page 14
Platform Narrative — is the macro message that embodies the “new rules of the game” that a platform
shaper wants to offer to the entities of a sector, industry, organizational or market context. The platform
narrative aims at convincing existing players to join a platform strategy because it will be easier for them to
produce and exchange value, as well as because they will learn and evolve much faster as compared to not
joining the platform strategy. One way to describe it is what John Hagel calls a narrative of positive
opportunities: “…an effort to broadly redefine the terms [..] for a sector through a positive, galvanizing message
that promises benefits to all who adopt the new terms”
Network Effects — Network effects are the mechanisms, peculiar of networks, whereby adding a new user
(or producer) makes the product/service/experience more valuable to every other user. Network effects
are of many types. One example could be the network effect generated by adding a landline to the network
(Metcalfe’s law).
MVP — in platform thinking this word stands for Minimum Viable Platform, besides the more usual Minimum
Viable Product. The MVP is an initial iteration of the platform strategy that is focused on validating the
riskiest assumptions: this is normally used to minimize the risk in designing and developing a whole
strategy - investing a lot of energy and money in developing it - without actually learning and validating
first if the ecosystem really exists and the strategy generates attraction and pull.
VUCA —VUCA is an acronym used to describe or to reflect on the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and
ambiguity of general conditions and situations in the modern world. It’s a key concept in Platform Design,
as the shifting conditions of reality create the mounting performance pressure on entities in the ecosystem
for which the platform strategy wants to be an answer.
page 15
The Entities in the Ecosystem
When developing a platform strategy, one needs to address, mobilize and support an Ecosystem. To make
it easier for platform designers to confront the complexity of designing for ecosystems, we’ve created a
simple framework to frame the entities involved in a platform strategy.
We differentiate entities into three groups:
Impact related entities, Owners/Shapers, and Larger entities, mostly interested,
IMPACT External Stakeholders are not involved in the interacting and impacted by the
continuous interactions happening in the whole system dynamics, not by
Entities ecosystem. the punctual interactions.
● Platform Owners/Shapers [PO]
● External Stakeholders [ES]
Entities that are interested in “consuming” the Normally Individuals or small-
DEMAND value produced in the ecosystem. medium organizations that
behave as a single, identifiable
Entities entity with a specific interest and
identifiable objectives that the
● Peer Consumers [PC] Platform’s Value Proposition
should meet.
Entities that are interested in “producing” the These entities are involved in
SUPPLY value consumed in the ecosystem. continuous interactions.
Entities
page 16
● Partners [PA]
● Peer Producers [PP]
Normally, the strategic connection with the
platform strategy grows as much as you get
closer to the owners/shapers.
Demand players (consumers) are less
strategically linked as they can leave the
ecosystem easily, with little impact.
Producers are more tightly connected, with
Partners investing a lot of energy and time
to become the best, and therefore being
concerned about developing a strong
connection with the owners.
IMPACT Entities
PLATFORM OWNERS (or SHAPERS) [PO]
is the entity who owns the vision behind the realization of the market and ensures that the platform strategy
exists, evolves and thrives. It can be a team, an organization or sometimes is a set of teams throughout different
organizations in a form of committee or a consortium.
This category refers to the “owners” of the Platform. Owners are those ultimately responsible to ensure
that the platform strategy exists and evolves. Normally we are talking about the firms - whether Startups
or Scale-ups or corporate firms - that own the platform, but nothing prevents this from being a non-profit
organization, a foundation, or even a cooperative structure that is open to the participants.
In the latter, peers or partners could also be owners of the platform in some ways: as an example, in the
Bitcoin Blockchain ecosystem, peers collaboratively own the infrastructure that makes the platform.
Sometimes, and increasingly, we see the potential to separate owners from shapers. One player can design a
strategy with the objective to craft a sustainable business model that is not necessarily related to owning
the infrastructure of the strategy. This potential separation is reflected by several trends in the evolution of
platforms, their governance, and the increasing type of players that can develop or influence the future of
platform strategies.
EXAMPLES Airbnb (as a firm), Apple (re the Apple app store ecosystem), Google (re the Android
ecosystem for example), Tripadvisor, WordPress: they’re all owners.
page 17
In the Bitcoin ecosystem, Bitcoin developers can be considered the shapers (as compared
to the actual owners of the infrastructure and value that are the Bitcoin miners and
Holders).
EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS [ES]
Stakeholders are entities that have a specific interest in platform success or failure, in controlling platform
externalities and outcomes, in regulating it or in exercising rights in the platform governance.
This category normally includes, for example, all the actors dealing with the regulation and control of
platform strategy on a local basis. It can also include the representatives of the plurality of peers and
partners involved in the value creation, or any pre-existing institutions that can help the platform thrive.
Additionally, this can include entities that can help distribute the strategy and help it grow. Normally, we’re
talking about entities that are hit by the positive or negative externalities of the platform.
EXAMPLES A municipality affected by the gentrification effect of short time rentals that wants to
regulate AirBnb. In a platform strategy that wants, for example, to help people “get fit”, a
provider of sports apparel can be an excellent PS, as it can hugely distribute and onboard
new participants to the strategy, for example by mentioning this possibility to all its
customers. Note that potential “distributors” are always great stakeholders to mention.
DEMAND Entities
PEER CONSUMERS [PC]
Peer Consumers (PC) who we may also call users, are entities interested in consuming, utilizing, accessing the
value that is created through and on the platform.
They are individuals but can also be small/medium business and single representatives or teams in bigger
organizations. Eventually, in some cases, they may evolve into peer producers when they realize that
beyond fulfilling a need they can seek evolutionary opportunities to produce.
EXAMPLES Travelers in AirBnb (PC), Bloggers in Wordpress (PC), Angels in AngelList (PC),
Homeowners in Houzz (PC)
page 18
SUPPLY Entities
PEER PRODUCERS [PP]
Peer Producers (PP) who we may also call producers, prosumers, and providers, are entities – most of the times
individuals – interested in providing value on the supply side of the ecosystem/marketplace, usually seeking for
opportunities to improve their professionality and honing their capabilities towards a better performance.
Typically, these players produce value occasionally and not systematically. Often the same peer may
behave as both consumer and producer in different phases of its relationship with the brand-platform. Like
in the case of a traveler that also rents her house when she’s not at home, such a user may sometimes
contribute to the value and other times consume it, depending on lifetime phases, contexts and more. Peer
producers can as well be SMBs or individuals.
EXAMPLES Hosts in Airbnb (PP), a non-professional trainer (PP) in a platform strategy around the
fitness ecosystems, an Uber X driver (PP) that drives only sporadically, a casual
developer that is trying to publish her first app on the Apple marketplace (PP).
page 19
PARTNERS [PA]
Partners (PA) are professional entities – individuals and SMBs, most of the time – that seek to create additional
professional value and to collaborate with platform owners on a stronger level of relationship.
Typically, partners are professional value creators that tend to specialize in a niche or advanced/premium
product/service and become better and better within time. Partners sometimes also facilitate, cater and
enhance the value production by acting as brokers, facilitators, connectors.
In particularly polarized platforms, where you substantially have two sides (supply and demand) the
partner could be an evolution of the peer producer into a more professionalized role. This evolution is
typically well received from the platform since partners drive more value than peer producers and are able
to pull many other players towards a better overall platform experience.
EXAMPLES Airbnb Superhosts (PA), WordPress theme developers (PA), Companies developing
applications on Apple or Android marketplaces (PA), Salesforce Forge developers (PA),
AngelList syndication SuperAngels (PA), WordPress Cloud service providers (PA) ...
We just presented you with a possible way to classify entities in your ecosystem. It’s highly possible that
your ecosystem doesn’t feature a “full” picture: it may not, for example, have any peer producers (often the
case in Business to Business ecosystems). Sometimes it is also hard to figure out who is a partner or peer
producer, but we normally don’t care much about the difference. The reason for introducing the Partner
and Peer Producer differentiation is to stress the point that - most of the time - real platform strategies
mobilize wide ecosystems, involving producers of different types: some more strategic, professional,
commercial (partners), some more informal (peer producers).
In the instructions coming later, we’re going to be back on mapping, and especially focusing on how to
group “entities” into “roles”, to simplify and streamline your design.
page 20
The two key engines of Platform Design
In our understanding, any platform strategy is based on the creation of two essential engines of value
creation. As a Platform Owner (or shaper), designing, building and evolving these two engines —and finding
a sustainable model to do so —is the most critical challenge.
Transactions Engine Learning Engine
It’s the set of channels and contexts specifically It’s the set of support services and contexts that
designed to facilitate interactions and exchanges the platform shaper provides and maintains for the
between entities-roles. Transactions are—at least participants so that they can learn, improve and
partially—already happening even before we evolve. It’s the way the platform shaper helps
deploy our strategy, however, the more a channel entities-roles to cope with and adapt to the
is designed to reduce the coordination/transaction complexity of the networked age.
cost, the more easily transactions can happen.
Why it’s Important Why it’s Important
Creating and improving channels to reduce Creating a Learning engine to help ecosystems face
transactions cost (allowing more niche interactions) VUCA
By making interactions easier, faster, reducing the cost of As we live through a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and
interaction between value producers and value consumers, Ambiguous World, platforms offer a huge promise of
platforms that aggregate and facilitate interaction make it accelerated learning, ways to find new opportunities and
easier to interact in smaller niches: if the cost (as a producer) hone new capabilities. The promise of a platform strategy is,
of coordinating with your consumer is lower, it will be easier essentially, that learning will happen faster by being “inside”
to create a solution that fits exactly with the niche than by staying “outside”. Key Question to ask: What
expectations. Key Question to ask: How is my strategy incremental process is available for the entities of my
reducing the cost of interaction and improving the possibility reference ecosystem to evolve? Am I offering radical
to interact in the context I’m willing to shape and organize? opportunities for improvement?
page 21
The Step by Step Platform Strategy Design Process
1 Mapping the Ecosystem
First, by using the Ecosystem Canvas you will reflect on the ecosystem you’re
looking to shape, and organize with your platform strategy.
You will map the entities present in this ecosystem and you will then
understand what roles they might play, clustering them if necessary.
2 Portraying Ecosystem’s Entities-Roles
With the Ecosystem Entity-Role Portrait, you will make a consistent deep
picture of each entities-roles’: what’s their context, what they’re trying to
achieve, with whom and how they’re trying to connect, what potential they
can express. This will make you better understand what kind of “experience
gains” they’re looking for—and that you therefore should provide—as a
platform shaper.
3 Analyzing the potential to Exchange Value
With the Ecosystem’s Motivation Matrix, you will then analyze their potential
to exchange flows of value: in other words, you will map what kind of value
exchanges the entities are performing already (or trying to), and what
additional type of value they might exchange if properly enabled.
4 Choosing the core relationships you want to Focus on
At this point in the design process, it’s important that the shaper identifies the focus: what are the entities in the
ecosystem we want to focus on? What relationships are going to be the core of our design work (at least for this
iteration?).
5 Identifying the Elementary Transactions
With the Transactions Board you will map how your ecosystem is currently
exchanging value (focusing on the entities and the relationships you decided
to prioritize), and you envision how your platform strategy can help them
transact value in an easier, cheaper and faster way by providing, and curating
channels and contexts that will make interactions and transactions more
likely to happen.
page 22
6 Designing the Learning Engine
With Learning Engine Canvas you will design a step by step process made of
support/enabling services that will help your entities embrace your platform
strategy. These services will help them evolve, emerge from the crowd,
become better producers and consumers, and ultimately to undergo a radical
evolution that will have them explore new opportunities, and behaviors not
intended initially.
7 Assembling the Platform Experiences
With the Platform Experience Canvas, you craft an experience that
synthesizes the core value proposition(s) arising from the Strategic Design
phase and that - more than others - you consider essential for your platform
strategy. With this canvas you will assemble the elements emerged from the
Transactions Board(s) and the ones emerged from Learning Engine Canvas.
You will then reflect around the sustainability model of this experience, thus
covering the basic elements of Business Modeling, you will think at what
resources and components you will have to set in place and manage in order
to deliver this experience, and how you will extract value from it.
8 Setting up the Minimum Viable Platform
With the Minimum Viable Platform Canvas, you finally move out of the
building to test in the real world if all your design assumptions have a future
or not. By looking at your design outputs, especially the Platform Experience
Canvas(es) you have compiled, you’ll extract the riskiest assumptions in your
strategy, and you’ll set experiments and metrics to validate them with your
ecosystem.
Box 3: PDT Digital Canvases on Miro
Miro is an online collaboration tool reshaping the future of teamwork.
Now you can also work with our digital canvases with a Miro template from:
[Link]
page 23
1 Mapping the Ecosystem
Practical Steps Guidelines
● Start by enumerating entities: if you’re in a group, try to diverge first, taking some time to brainstorm alone.
● Cluster similar entities together.
● Position PP/PC/PA based on the key value produced: are they consumers or producers?
● Choose a maximum of five entities in the PP/PC/PA (peers) spectrum. You can either cluster two similar
entities (finding an overarching description) or just choose five you want to start with.
Suggestions
When you start mapping, most likely you’ll map “entities”, individual entities in your ecosystem that have a specific
context, motivations, and expectations. To make your platform strategy more general and able to scale up, you’ll
want to keep as much of the ecosystem's potential as possible inside the reach of your strategy. You can, therefore,
cluster similar entities by giving them a “common” name: by allowing two slightly different entities to play in similar
ways, you’ll design a more loosely defined “role” (instead of entity) that could be played by both.
As an example, you can define a General Practitioner and a nurse, both “healthcare professionals”. Any time you
cluster a shared role for two or more entities, you’ll lose some detail but, as your platform strategy needs to be able
page 24
to scale up, this is a good thing as they’ll find their own way to participate, and you’ll be able to keep both of them
involved.
An Example: Prosumer Energy Production
In the ecosystem of independent renewable
energy production - referred to here as
Prosumer Energy Production - we could map
the following entities: Prosumer, Solution
Advisor and Solution Provider (see canvas to
the right).
In this example, the Solution Provider is
essentially a company that can technically
install a certain solution, whereas the
Solution Advisor clusters professionals
working in that field, like engineers,
architects, a construction company…
Note that solar panel manufacturers are seen as stakeholders in this example, since their products are
nowadays pure commodities and the value of this ecosystem is accrued elsewhere.
You can access the whole example here: “A Platform Design Example Explained”
> [Link]
Three Essential Tips and Tricks
● Use post-its, this will help you play around with entities, cluster them.
● Don’t obsess about PC vs PP vs Partners - it’s not so crucial, even if it’s a good idea to figure out
what is the key value provided (renewable energy production, in the example).
● Remember that you want to map entities involved in the continuous interaction as PC/PP/PA and
not those interested in the whole thing (these are platform stakeholders). Always ask: how many of
them? If you can only mention one or two, it’s unlikely they’re PC/PP/PA.
What do you end up with? How does this connect with the rest?
You’ll have a list of all the entities that are already Starting from this list, you’ll explore their context
trying to exchange value in the ecosystem you’re more in depth and start evaluating what value they
trying to shape. exchange already, and what they could exchange.
Additional reads, from our blog
“Design for Ecosystems: Emergence & Attraction”. Will explain to you better [Link]
page 25
the difference between entities, and roles.
“Design APIs for Disobedience” [Link]
Will tell you more about how to design loose platform strategies and let the
ecosystem innovate, institutionalizing these innovations within time.
2 Portraying Ecosystem’s Entities-Roles
Practical Steps Guidelines:
● CONVENIENCE GAINS are all about any “easier, faster, cheaper” way to do things as compared
to the current situation of the entity-role. This is going to be the part of a platform strategy that
resembles more the …. solution to a problem.
● To identify the REACH GAINS the entities are looking for, ask yourself: “what is their other half of
the apple” that these kinds of entities are seeking? What’s the perfect producer for this consumer
(and vice versa)? REACH GAINS should help you explore what dimensions are important, inside
your ecosystem, for entities to get in touch with the niche they’re looking for.
● Be sure you begin by first compiling the Entity-Role Portrait of the entity-role that seems the most
interesting for your design challenge: for which entity-role are you designing for in the first
page 26
stance?
Suggestions
Portraying entities is an activity that differs slightly from traditional user research approaches. In our
framework, ecosystem entities are loose clusters (see the reflection above with “healthcare
professionals”), that’s one of the reasons why we call them also Roles. If you come from a user research
approach you may, therefore, experience some issues while getting to the details of let’s say a real user
profile, a persona, etc. That’s perfectly fine! When you do platform design you want to design a strategy
that pulls a much wider spectrum of participants in that market, niche or context. For each role, you
want to design a value proposition that can capture different adoption contexts.
Entity-Role Portraits are indeed a keystone exercise to craft the narrative and value propositions for your
entities. Platform strategies have inherently multiple value propositions. The value proposition for an
entity-role can be described as follows:
“I’ll be able to leverage my potential, to reach my goals and cope with performance pressures, while the
platform will give me access to easier, faster, cheaper ways of doing things (convenience gains), help me
find exactly what I'm looking for (reach gains), and gain more value - whether money or somethings else -
while fully expressing my potential (value gains)”.
Finally: remember that you want to map what the entities you are looking to mobilize right now, not in the
future when your platform will exist. In a nutshell, keep the focus on the ecosystem (outside-in), not on your
“platform” idea. As an example: gains are those entities looking for in their current experience, not the
gains you’re thinking to offer.
To understand this and other key questions of this canvas you may, of course, rely on your industry
knowledge, intuition or, way better, on preliminary interviews. A platform strategy that is able to sustain
participants while letting them express their potential, will be generating what we call the pull factor: a
galvanizing attraction towards each of the entities. Each entity will, therefore, choose to play “inside” the
strategy you’re going to offer, as it’s more convenient than—instead—staying outside.
Two examples
In this example, you can find an entity-role
portrait for a Business Manager of a fictional
consulting platform company called CONSULTIA.
You can access the whole example here: “How to
Platform-ize existing Processes”
>[Link] the example of the
EP for the Airbnb host is also available here:
[Link]
page 27
In the Prosumer Energy Production example we
capture the Prosumer as highly motivated not only
by economical returns but also by a green spirit,
even if (s)he is currently blocked by the high entry
barrier to having a renewable energy plant at
home due to bureaucracy, hard-to-be-estimated
costs, uncertainty and lack of trust on the vendors
and suppliers side.
You can access the whole example here: “A
Platform Design Example Explained”
> [Link]
Three Essential Tips and Tricks
● Use post-its, this will help you move elements around and get to a clearer view.
● Start by the potential and then move into the compressors (goals and performance pressures),
and then gains.
● It’s a good idea to run a round of informal interviews (open-ended) with representatives of your
entities groups, or even to get them to participate in the mapping exercise.
What do you end up with? How does this connect with the rest?
You’ll have a clear understanding of your Remember to map the entities you feel more
ecosystem’s entities context (you’ve been wearing important, as further on in the process you’ll need
their clothes), and also a raw idea of your multi- to cross check your Platform Experience Canvas with
sided Value Propositions the relative Entity-Role Portraits, to verify you can
generate the “pull”!
Additional reads, from our blog
“Evolving User Research in the Age of Platforms & Ecosystems” [Link]
Will explain to you the key differences in the approach needed when
designing mobilization strategies (platforms) vs products and services.
You can also find the Airbnb Host example over there!
“How to Platform-ize existing Processes – Stories of Platform Design” [Link]
The reader may also enjoy an additional example, approaching the
transaction model in an existing context: the CONSULTIA case study.
page 28
3 Analyzing the Motivations to Exchange
Value
Practical Steps Guidelines
● Put your selected entities in the same order on the 1st row and column: as an example, the cell in
row 1 and column 2 should contain what the entity in row 1 “gives to” (or has the potential to
“give to”) the entity in column 2.
● Start by analyzing the value flows between entities of a different type, then move into the same
entity types (middle diagonal).
● Not all cells must be full with flows, it may be the case that there’s not much value flowing or
potential to flow: this should tell you something!
page 29
Suggestions
The Motivations Matrix is a highly divergent tool: you’ll need to map all the current and potential flows of
value that you see happening (or potentially happening) between the entities-role. Keep your mindset
open to see anything might be interesting and important. This is really a moment in which you listen to
your ecosystem: listen to what they’re telling you. What you’re trying to map here is no more than what
one entity can “give to” each other.
This exercise will help you let the most important relationships emerge, as we’ll see later: you may well be
surprised by some relationships that you didn’t deem “crucial” for your design, but that can emerge
powerfully as important.
Two Examples
Look at the ecosystem of Airbnb:
It’s important to note that, in this case, the
ecosystem existed before Airbnb (hosts, guests)
but Airbnb helped more figures emerge.
Note that it’s very important to map reputation
and feedback exchanges as these are powerful
quality filters!
Look at the motivations matrix related to a subset
of the ecosystem of prosumer energy production:
We can highlight here a very interesting
interaction: that between prosumers and solution
advisors. Solution advisors are experts on the
specific technology and advise on the best
technical and economical solution for the final
users. Sometimes Solution Providers have an
interest in playing the advisor role to the users,
but making the two roles separate can provide a
more transparent solution design process, and
more competition on efficiency between
providers.
You can access the whole example here: “A Platform Design Example Explained”
> [Link]
Three Essential Tips and Tricks
page 30
● Don’t ask if something is right or wrong: just map and generate divergence and abundance!
● It’s really important to map any possibility to exchange money, reputation, and feedback as these
are powerful engines of value exchange and can drive up quality.
● Just ask yourself “what can A give to B?” and be surprised by the answers
What do you end up with? How does this connect with the rest?
You’ll have a clear understanding of the potential This exercise brings you to identify the initial part
to exchange value in the system, plus an indication of the transactions engine potential: you’ll use the
of what are the most powerful relationships information from the motivations matrix to feed
(where most of the value can flow). into the Transactions Boards, and consolidate the
design of your transactions engine.
page 31
4 Choosing the Core Relationships you
want to Focus on
Once you have your Entity-Role Portraits and Motivations Matrix ready, it’s time for you to start
focusing in depth on what part of the strategy you want to first develop. Despite the fact that the
ecosystem you’re designing for is - and always will be - varied and abundant (and being alive it will evolve
in mostly unforeseeable directions) it’s a good idea for a strategist to find a core focus when developing
the first steps of a platform-ecosystem strategy.
It’s important to note that one can unroll a platform strategy in different steps, for example by deploying
different experiences within time, all carrying different business models, and target entities. At this
moment of your design session, you’ll need to ask: what are the one, two, three key relationships I want
to design for? It’s very important to start thinking in terms of relationships because relationships are the
roots of the experiences you will design.
Let’s go back into the Prosumer Energy Production
ecosystem. Among the many players that we
identified, there’s an abundance of possible
relationships that are worth exploring. If you focus
on the relationship between a Prosumer and a
Solution provider, what would be the experience
you end up designing? Most likely a “Get Powered
and Save Money” (or ‘Setup Home Power Grids’, if I
look from the other point of view) experience.
What happens if, instead, you focus on the
relationship between a Solution Provider and a
Solution Advisor? Most likely the experiences we
end up designing will be about local brand
ambassadors or finding financing sources for the
installation.
To understand what are the relationships worth
focusing on is not an easy catch: this will depend on
your interests, priorities and existing reach, but
also from what the ecosystem tells you about the
potential value flows.
As we anticipated above, in the Prosumer energy
production ecosystem it may be worthwhile to focus
on the relationship between the two sides of the
market (Solution Advisor - Solution Provider),
ending up designing a professional collaboration
experience.
page 32
It’s normally a good practice - according to our
experience - to pick a triangular set of
relationships, and try also to identify a “Core
Entity”.
You can access the whole example here: “A
Platform Design Example Explained”
> [Link]
The core entity that you’ll identify might be the one
you prioritize for: for example the one from whose
point of view you'll likely design the first
experiences.
It’s a good idea at this point to double check if you've got the Entity-Role Portraits for all the entities
you’ve chosen in your core system (especially the “Core Entity-Role”). If you don’t, it’s important to come
back to portraying the remaining entities as it will be essential for you in the reality check phase on the
potential that your strategy has to generate pull!
We recommend you to read “Design for Ecosystems: Emergence & Attraction“ (see: [Link]
DFE1) to understand more of how to prioritize entities, and why it makes sense in this open-ended
process that is platform design.
page 33
5 Identifying Elementary Transactions &
Channels
Practical Steps Guidelines
● Identify the relationship you’re exploring and try to focus on one relationship at a time. We
suggest you run a Transactions Board for each relationship you identified in your “Core System”
first.
● By looking at the elements emerged in the Motivation Matrix, enumerate all the elementary,
atomic transactions you can see already happening in the ecosystem, as well as the ones that may
happen if facilitated enough. Think of how you can reduce transaction cost for these interactions
to happen in an easier way.
● If two transactions don’t make sense being separated from each other, you can group them (eg:
book and pay in advance in Airbnb).
page 34
Suggestions
The Transactions Board should help you, once you’re focused on a given relationship, to enumerate all
the transactions that happen already, or might happen if facilitated by a platform strategy. One of the key
roles of the platform shaper (owner) is that of creating channels that can reduce the
coordination/transactions cost3. When thinking of improvements you can bring to the channels - for
interactions to happen at scale in an easier way - and what components & features should these channels
have, try to not stick to software-based thinking. Often reducing transaction cost means reducing
unnecessary steps and bureaucracy (think of vanilla contracts, process wizards, offer-templates,
payment channels, etc.). Also, it’s a good idea to focus on atomic transactions, because essentially we want
to enable them to happen at scale.
Sometimes this exercise may sound awkward and counterintuitive (too simple or at a too low level), or
you may end up asking, “what am I designing here?”. The key to understanding this exercise is to
understand that your mission here is to identify what transactions & channels already exist, how they can
be improved and what new ones you need to create to enable interactions and transactions at scale.
Furthermore, this “low level” design exercise will be incredibly useful when assembling the Platform
Experiences. It’s also very important to understand that we’re moving from value flows into value units so
that it becomes very important to try being specific in describing the type of unit of value that gets
exchanged. In this way, we can be precise when envisioning (later) what value/business model we can
attach to a certain platform experience.
Two Examples
Look at the first core of transactions enabled in
Airbnb, between the first entities (relationship)
It’s important to note that the Airbnb transaction
model, at the start, was extremely simple: this
helped Airbnb scale quickly and easily.
Simple transaction engines are quicker to grow: as
we explore higher value ecosystems, and more
complex relationships we may have to confront
more complex interactions.
Let’s look for a moment at the transactions board
related to the relationship between the solution
provider and the solution advisor in the prosumer
energy ecosystem. As you can see here, we’re more
or less mapping what’s happening already in this
industry: here our mission is more that of
understanding how we could improve the
channels and how we can consolidate the value units exchanged.
3
see page 12 “The two key engines of Platform Design”.
page 35
A new channel can be established, enabling ratings and feedback exchange. This is a direct advantage for
the consumers, who can finally choose the best suppliers for their needs and select the offering based on
their special needs. Of course, on the other hand this would let the best producers emerge, contributing
to the improvement of the quality of the services exchanged.
You can access the whole example here: “A Platform Design Example Explained”
> [Link]
Three Essential Tips and Tricks
● Don’t be too restrictive in what a channel is or is made of: a channel is everything that makes an
interaction easier to happen (an event? A template document, a contract etc.). Don’t think too
much in terms of software (websites and apps), because we know that platforms are not only
technologies, they’re mostly about reducing bureaucracy and unnecessary waste so that
ecosystems can manifest their potential.
● Try to think in terms of “actions”: a transaction is most likely being modeled as an action/verb.
● Use the arrows to determine the directionality, sometimes transactions can also be bi-directional.
● In the “notes on channel improvement” focus on how the new channel you’re envisioning may
positively impact (with a reduction of) the transaction cost.
What do you end up with? How does this connect with the rest?
You’ll have a simple model of atomic transactions, The Transaction Boards will provide you one type
and a list of channels that you’ll need to build as a of bricks you will need to combine with other types
platform owner. of bricks, in the constructions of the Platform
Experiences.
Additional reads, from our blog
“Why Platform Strategies are all about reducing Transaction Cost” [Link]
On this post, you’ll find a deeper explanation on why reducing the
transaction cost is a key element of your platform strategy.
page 36
6 Designing the Learning Engine
Practical Steps Guidelines
● Place each entity-role using a box on the left column and start exploring how they evolve through
the three steps (ONBOARDING, GETTING BETTER, CATCHING NEW OPPORTUNITY);
● After that, imagine how there could be an evolution between different entities-roles: how can a
consumer become a producer? How can a peer producer (less strategic) become a partner (more
strategic)?
Suggestions
Why do we talk about a learning and improvement engine when we talk about platforms? As we live in
complex times, entities in ecosystems are subject to continuous performance pressure. The Learning
Engine Canvas provides you a three steps process framework to design services (broadly defined) to
support your entities at every step: every step comes with a key challenge - like for users initially: finding
the right type of service for their needs - what can you design to provide them with the right aids to
overcome the challenges? Focus on one (or few) key challenges for every step, and one (or few) key
services. This is where you design most of your platform strategy as an owner: the way you support your
ecosystem entities to become the best they can be!
page 37
The Airbnb Example
The Learning Engine Canvas
is all about how you
support your entities in
the three-step process of
improvement.
In the onboarding phase,
you need to help the
entities go from 0 to 1: it’s
important to understand
that we’re interested in
making the first
transactions happen.
The photographer service4 from Airbnb is iconic of onboarding: having nice pictures of your house is a
well-known booster for new hosts, a powerful way to help them attract the first guests when they
4
Airbnb: Get a quote for a professional photographer? [Link]
page 38
don’t have a visible reputation yet. When it comes to getting better it’s always about helping your
entities grow from 1 to 100 and also deal with increasing demand (indeed, this step is mostly
interesting for value producers PP, PA). Also, consumers could get better (try to ask the question
contextually).
Catching new opportunities finally is almost always about new ways to interact in the ecosystem, it’s
normally a transformative moment, where the entity explores opportunities beyond what was
originally planned (transformative, generative), such as changing roles, opening new markets,
professionalizing, or climbing the value chain.
In the example of Airbnb, we could focus on the Co-host5 role: co-hosts can host for others. We can see
the co-host as a support service for the hosts that can’t deal with increasing demand (“I don’t host
professionally but I've got a second house and I need someone to help”), or as an opportunity for hosts that
learn to love hosting and can be doing it just… professionally!
The Prosumer Energy Production Example
Prosumers want to find the
best technical and economical
solution for their needs, and
here they have lists and
catalogs that help them find
the right supplier and the
viable financing method, to
have the best power system
installed. They will later get
better by exploiting the power
generation at its best (i.e.
maybe by adding components
or insurances) and explore
new opportunities by
stepping into energy trading,
or local grids (i.e. selling the
electricity in the
neighborhood, increasing the energy resiliency of communities) or simply by referring other
consumers as potential customers for the supply side.
Solution advisors and Solution providers need tools to make their daily routines optimized and
reduce costs. An interesting evolution for providers could be to increase their scope and robustness by
partnering with different professionals: an automated supply chain produced by the platform owner
could help providers focus on the technological advancements, and reduce cost due to mass buying.
Advisors on their hand could start thinking to get larger contracts by collaborating with general-
purpose installers, for instance, or directly with manufacturers.
5
Airbnb: What’s a Co-Host? [Link]
page 39
You can access the whole example here: “A Platform Design Example Explained”
> [Link]
Three Essential Tips and Tricks
● Practical onboarding steps for consumers are normally: understanding what they can consume
(checking the menu), while in the getting better they can explore more advanced consumption
patterns (eg: bundles)
● Practical onboarding steps for producers are: explaining to the ecosystem what they can offer
(writing the menu!), and getting better normally means offering more complex things, sometimes
in combination with others (bundling) or with the platform (eg: badged roles, see Airbnb’s
“Superhost”)
● Try to identify connections with consumption and production sides of the marketplace: if you’re
lucky to have a potential evolution path that connects the two you may have an internal growth
engine!
What do you end up with? How does this connect with the rest?
At the end of this exercise, you will have a Learning support services are the other essential
structured idea of what kind of services (broadly set of Lego bricks you will use to compose the
speaking) should your platform strategy provide to platform experiences: this set of bricks is all about
the entities, to allow them to improve the relationship between platform
continuously. (owners/shapers) and entities, while the
transactions are the relational, peer to peer, bricks.
Additional reads, from our blog:
“Why Platforms need to be Engines of Learning” [Link]
Despite being a bit old, this post will introduce you to the idea of offering
an engine of learning as an answer to the continuous disruptions of the
interconnected age.
7 Assembling Platform Experiences
page 40
Practical Steps Guidelines:
● Give the experience a name, choosing the entity of which you’re using the point of view (core
entity)
● Use the canvas without restrictions
● Use different post-it colors to identify entity-to-entity and platform-to-entity interactions
● Use post-its to play with the steps so that you can move them around until you reach a good flow
● Explore the business model only at the end, when you can see the full flows of value
Suggestions:
page 41
The Platform Experience Canvas, is the tool we
use to consolidate most of the previous insights
and conversations. To build the platform
experience one can use three essential types of
bricks:
● The services that the Platform Owner
provides for continuous improvement
as part of the Learning Engine
● The atomic transactions happening
between the entities in the ecosystem
● Further elements of consumable
services, functionalities, support
services that serve to complement the
experience.
The Airbnb Example
Let’s look at the simplicity of the hosting experience on Airbnb; it all starts with the host onboarding
steps (registering, getting a photoshoot) and then moves into the interaction: booking, hosting and
reviewing. As you can see, yellow post-its represent interactions with the platform (owner) and blue ones
represent entity to entity interactions.
The Prosumer Energy Production Example
page 42
In the Prosumer Energy Production example, by reducing the paperwork, and the friction generated by
the lack of clarity on expectations and offerings, we step into a win-win game. The overall installation
turnover is increased, consumers are happier since they could evaluate serenely an investment
opportunity and hopefully stay in the approved budget, solution suppliers (advisors and providers) can
emerge according to their professionality and quality.
In this example, we have a clear transactional business model, since the platform can charge users with a
fee per transaction and, for this reason, it’s offering free learning (i.e. free information and guidance) to all
the interested parties. This opportunity to learn and improve is a strong attraction point towards the
ecosystem and that is why it’s important not to hide it behind a monetary request. On the other hand, it’s
possible to imagine different sustainability models: for instance, if the platform strategy focuses on
producers, maybe they will appreciate membership-based access to free networking and partnering
opportunities, or to curated catalogs of solutions.
You can access the whole example here: “A Platform Design Example Explained”
> [Link]
Three essential Tips and Tricks:
page 43
● Describe the Value proposition as something that resonates with the Entity-Role Portrait of the
core entities-roles: allowing them to leverage on their potential, to achieve goals and respond to
performance pressures, getting relevant gains in the process while expressing their craft.
● Choose one point of view, in a relationship: keep an eye on the relative transaction board, to pick
all the interactive elements.
● Focus on the onboarding and getting better parts of the Learning Engine Canvas: most likely the
transformative (getting to the new opportunity) event, will be part of ... just another experience.
What do you end up with? How does this connect with the rest?
You’ll have a tangible sign of your platform One or more platform experiences will be part of
strategy: if someone asks you, what’s your your MVP, and will drive how you build the
platform, a platform experience is a good candidate experiments you want to build (if your strategy is
as an answer. The platform experience is what you already existing).
want to bring to the ecosystem.
page 44
8 Setting up the Minimum Viable
Platform
Practical Steps Guidelines
● Start by defining what are the experiences you want to feature in the MVP.
● Understand what are the key assumptions in these experiences.
● Imagine how you can build the leanest MVP possible, and how this MVP is going to test the
assumptions.
● Pick the most unbiased criteria for validation, e.g. testing measurable conversion rates, for
example from invitations to a temporary social media group.
Suggestions
Setting up the Minimum Viable Platform is, essentially similar to setting up a Minimum Viable Product: the
biggest of the differences relies upon the fact that a platform strategy is an “interactive” product and that
the platform value normally grows with the generation of network effects. Normally we suggest
validating, as soon as possible, at least the following assumptions: business model, trust and attraction.
page 45
Is it clear what the business model assumptions are? (i.e. is the business model actually working?) What is
the attraction assumption? (i.e. is the value proposition working? Are the entities feeling the attraction
towards the platform?). The trust assumption may be more complex to understand. With trust
assumption, we intend every assumption related to moving from consuming a solution coming from an
industrial player to consuming a service in direct interaction with a peer. People are used to booking a
room in a hotel, but would they travel to a stranger’s house? Apparently yes.
The Airbnb Example
How would an MVP for Airbnb be if we should prototype it today? We could use a Facebook group and Paypal for
escrow payments and make a so-called “concierge” implementation (an implementation of an MVP where you don’t
prevent the user from understanding that you’ve built a prototype and that some of the work happens ...manually.)
Three Essential Tips and Tricks:
● Start always by looking at what you have: you may have some resources ready that you can easily
combine in an MVP, or just leverage on (eg: a list of contacts)
● Don’t procrastinate the validation of your business model assumption
● Enumerate the assumptions with your team and only after you’ve listed them all, try to identify
the riskiest!
page 46
What do you end up with? How does this connect with the rest?
You’ll have a clear setup of an MVP, something that you Validating or invalidating the assumptions in the MVP
can now go prototype and use for learning if your should help you to get back to the design and potentially
riskiest assumptions are true or not.. make different choices. Once your ecosystem-platform
fit is validated then you’ll need to think about your
growth strategy.
Additional reads, from our blog
“Design For Ecosystems: Discovering Potential and Testing Assumptions.” [Link]
This post will cover widely how a good approach to validation interviews
can be derived from the practices of customer development and will
provide great guidance for the early steps of validation.
page 47
A Handy Dashboard: The Platform Design Canvas
Recently, we’ve been using the Platform Design Canvas in an increasingly limited set of cases, in
any case less and less as a design tool. We noticed, on the other hand, that our community played with it
mostly as either as a tool providing a quick way to recap the ecosystem potential and the platform
strategy (some sort of “dashboard”) or to quickly explore platform potential without diving into more
complex processes.
The Platform Design Canvas can essentially be used as a dashboard:
● You can use the PDC to step by step consolidate the insights you generate by using the toolkit into
the canvas itself (especially in the steps going from 1 (the Ecosystem Canvas) to 6 (the Learning
Engine).
● As an alternative, you can grab a PDC and quickly brainstorm (or map an existing platform
strategy) in one single sheet.
The example above covers an early version of Airbnb and is provided for illustrative purposes.
page 48
CLOSING NOTES
Please note that The Platform Design Toolkit 2.2 and its User Guide cover the whole Strategy Design part
of the platform design process. Understanding and exploring a platformization opportunity - before
actually diving into the design - is another essential step of the process.
The Platform Opportunity Exploration Guide, accompanied by three additional canvases can hugely help
strategists in the Exploration Phase and it is an essential addendum of the Platform Design Toolkit.
The Platform Opportunity Exploration Guide helps It’s made of three more Canvases and a dedicated User Guide
you map how an ecosystem already interacts, what
platform opportunities might exist and what value
chain strategic gameplay makes sense to adopt to
transform the value chain and gain the aggregator
role.
Explore Platform Opportunities before you jump into
Platform Design!
Platform Opportunity Exploration Guide
[Link]
page 49
Training Opportunities
Check out all our Training opportunities: [Link]
Thanks!
Thank you for reading this guide! We would love you even more if you
● register to the Platform Design Newsletter “The Rules of the Platform Game” here:
[Link]
● follow our Medium Publication “Stories of Platform Design” [Link]
MEDIUM
● visit our website at [Link]
● get in touch with us at hello@[Link] for more information on how to
work together and our private advisory and training services
Shout out a tweet by clicking here :)