Teaching

Technology Competition & Strategy

This course gives you a framework for thinking about technology competition and strategy, and about a business revolution that we are in the middle of, a platform revolution.Platform-enabled marketplaces, and other Internet-based goods and products with digital components and network effects, produce over half the revenue for over half of the world’s100 largest companies (e.g., Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, American Express, TimeWarner). Technology entrepreneurship is commonplace. But this class of goods has very different, almost weird, characteristics, with distinctive economic forces that affect supply (e.g., supply and cost structures), demand (e.g., how value is created) and markets (e.g.,industry organization, alliances, and competition). Managing and responding to these forces requires distinctive competitive strategies. Conversely, strategic errors can be devastating. What are these forces? How do they impact market outcomes in technology industries? And how should firms shape their competitive strategy?

We explore these and other questions and develop insights that cover information and technology goods (hardware, software, online information goods, Internet and telecommunications services, consumer electronics, entertainment and media products) and other industries that have digitization and network effects, such as health care, banking, services, biotechnology, transportation and energy. The course employs a mix of simple but rigorous analytical models, emerging theories, and plenty of real-world examples, cases and experiences.

Syllabus for Winter 2018 Offering

Example Questions Discussed in Course

• How should firms adapt product design and launch strategies for network goods?

• How should multi-sided platforms drive adoption and which side should they charge?

• How should platform owners think about the ideal level of openness and control?

• When are exclusivity contracts between platforms and developers desirable and likely?

• How do companies become platform leaders?

• Why and how are standards wars fought?

• How do firms that contribute to a composite platform cooperate and compete?