The PLATFORM OPPORTUNITY

EXPLORATION GUIDE
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Release note updates

Document Release Date April 2021

Version 1.0

Description of the Release This release overtakes the existing Platform Opportunity Exploration
Guide previously released in 2018 (v 0.1).
The content of this guide is now based on more than two years of
application of our opportunity exploration framework that has been
largely taught at our Platform Design Bootcamp to hundreds of certified
professionals.

Main elements characterizing this release:

- a newly packaged set of related canvases available in the
companion download pack;
- now features both an “impromptu” (short) process of exploration
and the fully structured one (suggested)
- the guide introduces the Six Platform Plays approach to
transforming value chains.

Related Documents The Platform Design Toolkit User Guide

Based on Platform Design 2.2

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:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

If you’re in doubt on what you can or cannot do based on this license please
reach out to [email protected]
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Foreword
Dear reader,
platform strategies have become crucial to innovation: platform thinking, marketplaces
and ecosystem driven strategies are now pervasive to every business context and
constitute a basic capability of teams that want to create business, initiatives and
organizations that can leave a mark on the market and society.

As we’ll see in this guide, the digitally transformed economy is now based on a
three-layered context and despite a large economic value is today collected by large global
platform-infrastructures (that we normally call FANG or GAFA, identifying them with
Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, though the phenomenon is more general….). These
digital giants operate on top of industrial infrastructures provided by the incumbents of
the XXth century (telcos, retailers, banks, …) that are living through increasingly
compressed margins, highly competitive landscapes, and are subject to globally
consolidating markets. Besides pushing incumbents down, GAFAs continuously swallow
smaller (but growing) markets leveraging their assets, and capability to distribute to large
user bases.

Despite this landscape, the changing dynamics of demand leave incredible opportunities
for emergent players - and incumbents as well - to venture out and shape strategies that
mobilize specific economic contexts. According to Ben Evans, despite “digital” already
transforming everything, only 20% of our markets are organized through digital
platforms, leaving abundant opportunities for everyone to play a role in the
transformation.

According to NFX’s James Currier1 - a true marketplace thinking legend - “anything that
we care about is going to be digitised and touched by the efficiency that these interfaces
bring” because as Rita McGrath2 reminds us “...as you start to be able to transact more
readily in a digital context you start to see market-based transactions where you used to
have only firm-based transactions”

As a consequence of this process, we’re seeing new players coming up in more specific

1
Marketplaces: Unveiling the math behind society and what to do about it — with James Currier
2
Seeing Around Corners (#19) by aperture.co
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market segments such as proptech, legaltech, healthcare, etc… In all these markets we can
expect tails to get longer, increasingly enabling smaller producers to join and aggregators
(platforms) moving in the direction of more managed and vertical marketplaces.

In this context, we believe that the movement behind platform design is just moving its
first steps. By bringing ecosystems centric thinking and complex systems back into the
main focus of the design process, we believe that platform design can bring a relevant new
potential to the economy, and entrepreneurial activity of all kinds, fast moving the global
economy towards systemic regeneration, and positive impact: this is why in November
2020 we also released our comprehensive review of the New Foundations of
Platform-Ecosystem Thinking3.

We’re here to consolidate the progress that researchers and designers are making globally,
into open source and ever simpler tools that anyone can use to design and execute
strategies that shape ever more contextual parts of our economy, into living, interacting,
learning systems.

Kindly,
the Platform Design Toolkit team at Boundaryless

3
New Foundations of Platform-Ecosystem Thinking - a whitepaper by Boundaryless
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Special Acknowledgements
Many people contributed ideas and gave us inspiration for building this additional
guideline to the Platform Design Toolkit. We want to thank explicitly Chris Daniel and Bill
Murray for their precious help in shaping up the integration between platform thinking
and Wardley Maps.

The Platform Design Toolkit team also wants to thank a few special ones:

● Simon Wardley for being a true legend in business strategy, having contributed such
an awesome tool and knowledge framework as Wardley mapping - and much more -
to the Commons, for everyone to use.
● Ben Thompson for his incredibly pioneering work in defining aggregators and
aggregation theories, as an essential part of the modern economy.
● John Hagel III for giving us the lenses to look at the modern complexity of digital
industries.

We owe a lot to many, we stand on the shoulders of giants!

Thanks to all who contribute knowledge in the open.

Onwards!
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Table of Content
Release note updates 1

Foreword 2

Special Acknowledgements 4

Table of Content 5

Introduction 7
The Phases of Platform Design 8
Box 1: The Platform Design Toolkit User Guide 8
Box 2: Platform Growth Guide and Course in the making 9
Focus on the The Exploration phase 9
Basic Concepts and Prerequisites 10
A Unified Digital Market Theory 11
Understanding Value Chains and Evolution 12
From Genesis to Ubiquity 12
Ecosystems as Future Sensing Engines 13
Long Tails, Aggregators, Infrastructures 14
Fragmentation 14
Concentration 15
Be the Aggregator: discover the Platform Opportunity 15
Be the Aggregator 16
Putting everything together: Cicero’s Triangle 17
Connecting Value Chain maps & Platform (Aggregation) Strategies: a Platform’s Wardley Map
18
From C-Shape to Z-Shape, the six platform plays 19
From C-Shape to Z-Shape 20
The Six recurring Platform Plays and the C-Z transition. 20

The Exploration Journey 27

Getting out of the Building 27
Approaching Exploration 27
A. Ecosystem Mobilization 27
B. Product & Service Innovation 28
Some Definitions: Ecosystems, Arenas and Platformizations Spaces 29
The Ecosystem 30
The Arena 30
The Platformization Space 31
A quick option: Impromptu Platform Exploration 32
The Patterns of Platformization Table 35
A structured approach to Platform Opportunity Exploration 37
The Example context we’re going to use 38
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The Step-by-Step Opportunity Exploration Process 39

0. Identifying the ecosystem and its arenas 41
1. Scanning the ecosystem: 43
2. Identifying Leverageable Assets and Moats 47
3. Choosing the arena to focus on 51
4. Translating everything into the Wardley Map 54
5. Applying the Six Platform Plays 60
6. Identifying value chains and the platformization space and prepare for the platform design
process 66

CLOSING NOTES 69

Training Opportunities 69

Thanks! 69
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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 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 set of basic concepts and prerequisites;

● a description of a unified market theory on top of which this guide is designed.

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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 Exploration Guide will mainly revolve around phase 1.

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?”

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).

Box 1: The Platform Design Toolkit User Guide

The Strategy Design and Validation phases are not covered by this exploration guide which focuses on the
Exploration phase. You can learn more about these phases with the Platform Design Toolkit User Guide. To know
more, please refer to:
● “Platform Design Toolkit and User Guide” https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/toolkit

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 build
prototypes) that is 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. By growing the supply and demand side of the system, generating network effects, the strategy
becomes more relevant and valuable.
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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: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/growth-subscribe

To know more about how we approach growth hacking, please refer to the below selection of blog posts:
● The New Growth Landscape https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/growth-landscape/home

Focus on the The Exploration phase

The exploration phase that is detailed in this document is critical as it helps the shaper (the team or
organization that is actively trying to create the strategy) in understanding if there’s the right opportunity
to shape a market, a context, an organization.

To identify an opportunity to create a platform strategy, a shaper needs to understand first the relationship
between its current identity and assets (transient competitive advantage) and the existing ecosystem, and
later what key strategic gameplays can characterize a strategy that, in any case, is first and foremost
designed for the ecosystem.

Indeed, the exploration phase ends with the first chasm of the platform design process: defining the
opportunity means understanding if a more complex continuous iteration of design, validation, and
prototyping should be put in place, with the aim of demonstrating that there’s a fit between the existing
ecosystem, the potential that it can express, and the platform strategy that aims at sustaining it.
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Basic Concepts and Prerequisites

To most correctly approach this document, the reader needs to be familiar with the common language of
Platform Design, therefore we highly suggest the reader to read “Platform Design Toolkit: the User Guide
v2.2” available on Platform Design Toolkit website4, especially sections:

● A methodological note: Design for Ecosystems page 7

● Platform Design Glossary page 13
● The Entities in the Ecosystem page 15
● The two key engines of Platform Design page 19

Reading that document will provide the reader with the essential understanding of recurring concepts and
give the logical frame inside of which this Platform Opportunity Exploration Guide finds its role.

Besides knowing the logical frame and key glossary terms and concepts we believe that - before diving into
opportunity exploration - the reader of this document needs to know more about some advanced platform
design concept. In the rest of this section, we’ll introduce our synthetic and unified digital market theory,
These introductions will be synthetic and link to existing online resources that can be used to go deeper.

4
https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/
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A Unified Digital Market Theory5

The framing model we present in this section wants to address some of the most important concepts
needed to understand modern - digitally enabled - markets. More in detail, we’ll offer a way to answer the
following questions:
● What market are you addressing?
● What evolutionary forces operate in that market?
● What is the user value?
● What competition can/should you expect?

To do this, we’ll introduce and correlate and three key concepts:

● value chains, and evolution of human activities (based on Simon Wardley’s work6);
● the layering of digital markets, and the long tail (using the seminal concepts introduced by John
Hagel and others7)
● aggregators and aggregation theory based on Ben Thompson work8.

5
Note for the reader: this section is heavily based on our “Long Tails, Aggregators & Infrastructures”
Available at: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/long-tails-aggregators-infrastructures-bdf84e32531d
6
“Wardley maps: The use of topographical intelligence in business strategy” – Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/wardleymaps.
7
Deloitte Insights. (2018). The hero’s journey through the landscape of the future. Available at:
https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/topics/operations/heros-journey-landscape-future.html
8
Stratechery.com. (2018). Aggregation Theory – Stratechery by Ben Thompson. Available at: https://stratechery.com/concept/aggregation-theory/
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Understanding Value Chains and Evolution

When talking about human activities, Evolution spans from a moment of invention (genesis)— when
something is uncertain and novel — to a status where everything is well defined, where the activity is
accessible everywhere, at a relatively affordable price (commodity). This evolution is driven by
ever-increasing demand and — therefore competition.

From Genesis to Ubiquity

Essentially, when something new comes up, it gets custom built — existing in one or few instances. If this
“something” proves useful, demand increases and producers need to make more of it. This results in
producers demanding more standardized components from suppliers. In turn, more standard components
make it possible for new producers to create competing instances of this “something” that, in the meantime,
becomes a product (something that one can buy).

Evolution of Human Activities9 The type of players involved in the process of evolution10

Within time, increased demand means that consumers want to access this product everywhere, and at any
time, on the other hand, producers want to provide this product to larger cohorts of users: this ultimately
drives the evolution of the product into a service and, ultimately, into a consumable utility.
It’s rather simple to relate this to the story of computing for example: from Eniac11 to standardized
architectures (mainframes12), to server farms with racks, to managed hosting13, then cloud computing and
now…serverless14.

9
From Simon Wardley blog.gardeviance.org
10
From Simon Wardley blog.gardeviance.org
11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer
13
What is managed hosting? - Definition from WhatIs.com. Available at: https://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/definition/managed-hosting .
14
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing
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Ecosystems as Future Sensing Engines

As Wardley clearly explains15 ecosystems should be used by organizations as “future sensing engines”: the
success of a modern company is all about creating tools for the ecosystem to innovate with a lower risk of
failure.

In a continuous Innovate-Leverage-Componentize cycle, the organization:

● makes tools and building blocks for the ecosystem to create new experiences and innovations;
● watches how enabling blocks/services are used to create new products, and services that sit on top
of the enabling ones in the value chain;
● eventually standardizes these novel services, actually eating the ecosystem’s cake (pushing the
ecosystem to create newer things, on top of the newly standardized products).

This process contributes within time, in cycles, to climb the value chain, eventually drive innovations. At the
same time an “enabling” player like this (a platform/infrastructure) establishes a key position as an
ecosystem organizer, enabler, and ruler.

15
Wardley, S. (2014). Understanding ecosystems. Blog.gardeviance.org. Available at:
https://blog.gardeviance.org/2014/03/understanding-ecosystems-part-i-of-ii.html
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Long Tails, Aggregators, Infrastructures

Let’s leave Simon Wardley’s work for a moment and concentrate on the “business types'' that are identified
in the “Hero’s Journey”16. John Hagel’s (and others’) seminal work lets us understand what the three major
business types available today are and correlate these with two more dominating dynamics of digital
markets, namely fragmentation, and consolidation.

The hero’s journey identifies three major business types:

● Infrastructure management business: “driven by powerful scale economics, require skills to

manage high-volume, routine processing activities and have cultures that prioritize standardization,
cost control, and predictability. The facility or asset trumps the human being.”
● Product/service (P/S) business: “Product/service innovation and commercialization businesses are
driven by economies of time — speed to market — and, as a result, require skills focused on rapid
iteration in design and development so that market opportunities can be quickly identified and
addressed. The culture prioritizes creative talent — everything is oriented toward supporting the
creative “stars.”
● Customer relationship business: “Customer relationship business types are driven by economies of
scope — building broader relationships with a growing number of customers. This business type
requires skills related to gathering and analyzing large amounts of data to develop a much deeper
understanding of the evolving context of each customer. The culture of this business type is
completely focused on the customer — the customer is king no matter how much internal turmoil
and heartburn meeting customer requirements might create.”

Fragmentation
Among these three business types, Hagel points out how P/S Businesses are the only ones that are subject
to fragmentation trends: increasing demand of personalized services (from a customer point of view), and
the increasing penetration of powerful enabling technologies for producers (think to 3D printing, or mobile
computing), plus available ubiquitous infrastructures as a service (think APIs, cloud services) make smaller
producers more competitive and capable, while at the same time, reduce the investment needed to play the
producer role. This essentially means that the future is about smaller and smaller producers, able to thrive
by connecting with their niche customer base. This phenomenon has been popularized for the first time by
Chris Anderson, in his seminal articles and books “The Long Tail”17.

Kevin Kelly’s 1000 true fans18 is powerful in explaining this:

“Everything made, or thought of, can interest at least one person in a million — it’s a low bar. Yet if even only
one out of million people were interested, that’s potentially 7,000 people on the planet. That means that
any 1-in-a-million appeal can find 1,000 true fans.

16
Hagel III, J., 2014. The hero’s journey through the landscape of the future. [online] Deloitte Insights. Available at:
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/operations/heros-journey-landscape-future.html
17
Anderson, C., Anderson, C., Pao, E., Karpf, D., DiResta, R., McKenna, M., Crawford, S. and Pontin, J. (2018). The Long Tail. WIRED. Available at:
https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/ .
18
Kelly, K. (2018). The Technium: 1,000 True Fans. Kk.org. Available at: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/ .
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The trick is to practically find those fans, or more accurately, to have them find you.”

Concentration
The last part of Kelly’s sentence “The trick is to practically find those fans, or more accurately, to have them find
you” teases the role that Customer/Relationship businesses have in modern ecosystem economics.

According to Hagel, Customer/Relationship businesses need to become “trusted advisors” and “talent agents”
able to connect consumers to the right product/producers, and producers (talents) to the right consumers
and/or support services. Aggregation platforms, by leveraging network effects, attract all sorts of demand
and supply and therefore have the potential to play this “connection” role.
This is related to what we call “access and reach gains” in our Entity Portrait in the Platform Design Toolkit:
the necessity that players have to connect with their “other half of the apple” (a consumer with the right
producer and vice versa).

It’s easy to see then how both aggregation platforms (increasingly playing also the role of the C/R business)
and infrastructure businesses have a clear tendency to concentrate:

● Infrastructures that make essential components cheap and ubiquitous, powering more and more
aggregation platforms, and C/R business, are subject to concentration (growth-monopoly) because
they need economies of scale and operate at the essential cost of business. Think Amazon Web
Services.
● Aggregation platforms (playing also the C/R business role often) are subject to network effects,
needed to ensure the economies of scope (generate infinitely different experiences): as it’s
impossible to provide mass customization industrially (the cost of bureaucracy would make the
process so costly that would be impossible to serve small customers), aggregation platforms need to
connect the right producer to the right consumer for self serving each other, seek to become “the
place to be” and often monopolize an industry. Think Airbnb.

Be the Aggregator: discover the Platform Opportunity

Understanding this unified theory of digital markets should now help an adopting organization understand
where it wants to play. Being a P/S business - making products and services - means dealing with an
ever-fragmenting market (a market made of smaller and smaller niches), where competition abounds.
On the other hand, becoming an infrastructure provider means having to compete with giants, and having
to be so efficient to function at the lowest cost of business possible, with an ever-shrinking marginality.
That’s more or less where most of the incumbents and some of the digital giants (FANG19s) are playing now
20
.

19
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Apple,_Amazon,_Netflix_and_Google
20
Read our contextual analysis of 2018’s Internet Trends here “Internet Trends 2018: what does it mean for You, Platforms and Society”.
Available at: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/internet-trends-2018-what-does-it-mean-for-you-platforms-and-society-c2ff479f7d6e .
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Be the Aggregator
According to this analysis, it should then be clear that the most promising role in the economy of the XXIst
century is that of the aggregator (the “platform”). But what are the key aggregator types, and what are
their key characteristics?21

The aggregator controls the Aggregators increasingly control not only supply but also demand side of the
user relationship directly marketplace: in a world of plummeting coordination cost, the advantage is
moving towards aggregating demand, and that’s what most of the successful
aggregators do22.

The aggregator has Thanks to digital technologies aggregators have near-zero marginal cost of
near-zero marginal cost of connecting users to producers/products : this happens either because they
connecting users to provide entirely digital goods, or because they use internet technologies to
producers/products provide channels for self-managed coordination between peers.

The aggregator has The attraction generated by the network effect23 generate stronger customer
decreasing acquisition cost user acquisition with growth: in non-connected businesses, the declining
customer-product fit makes acquisition cost increase once the brand moves
away from the initial cohort of “perfect” customers.

Aggregators can also be characterized by type, Thompson differentiates them according to the relationship
they have with the supply side (as all of them normally aggregate demand in the same way):
● aggregators that acquire supply — e.g.: Netflix (that essentially buys or creates shows);
● aggregators that face a cost of transaction to onboard organic supply source - e.g.: UBER (that
needs to make background checks for new drivers);
● aggregators that have zero marginal supply cost — e.g.: Google search or Facebook (if your page is
not on Google you don’t exist, therefore you’ll optimize to be crawled).

21
In this part of the document we’re building on the key ideas from Ben Thompson —please refer to previously referenced “Aggregation Theory”
series. See: “Aggregation Theory.” 2017. Stratechery by Ben Thompson. https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory
22
As Thompson puts it: “there have always been far more users/consumers than suppliers, which means that in a world where transactions are costly owning
the supplier relationship provides significantly more leverage. The fundamental disruption of the Internet has been to turn this dynamic on its head.”
23
For a good recap on network effects, the reader can peek into our growth related research page at:
https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/growth-landscape/home. Also “The Network Effects Bible” by NFX, Available at:
https://medium.com/@nfx/the-network-effects-bible-c6a06b8ae75b , and “All about Network Effects” by Andreessen Horowitz. (2016). Available
at: https://a16z.com/2016/03/07/all-about-network-effects are essential reads.
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Putting everything together: Cicero’s Triangle

With the aim of simplifying the explanation of this convergence we created what is often called “Cicero’s
triangle” as a simplified view of digital markets:

Below, it’s possible to see some examples of brands and entity types, mapped across the triangle:
● Airbnb superhost is an excellent example of a player whose market is fragmenting (becoming
nicher)
● Netflix and Uber are two good examples of aggregators (they’re different in type)
● AWS, Sharetribe and UPS are all good examples of different types of infrastructures (respectively,
FANG, niche infrastructure, and incumbents).
 page 18

Connecting Value Chain maps & Platform (Aggregation) Strategies: a Platform’s

Wardley Map

In the context of what we just described, anyone who wants to

play a role in the future of business needs to understand
markets and value chain evolution. While
evolution — componentization — is a key driver, coming from
“below” in the value chain, another key force that shapes
industries — from “above” — is personalization.

As we explained already, Cicero’s “triangle” helps to frame

these two forces, by highlighting how concentration and
fragmentation operate at different layers.

It’s therefore important, as an organization, to develop the

capability to look into value chains with aggregation (platform)
strategies in mind, as they play such a fundamental role in the
modern economy.

To do that, we’re complementing Platform Design Toolkit with what we consider is the leading framework
for evolution and value chain mapping: Wardley Maps24. Wardley maps essentially help you map all the
layers of a value chain, along with the evolutionary process that we described in section “Understanding
Value Chains and Evolution”.

The first question that we want to ask, in mapping Cicero’s triangle with Wardley Maps, is related to
understanding how the zones of a Cicero’s map fit into the evolutionary framework that a Wardley map
offers to the strategist. To do so we’ll first try to spread Cicero’s triangle on a Wardley Map:

24
Here’s a good primer on how to map, using a great tool: “Understand context and diminish risk: How to build your first Wardley Map with
RealtimeBoard.” Available at: https://realtimeboard.com/blog/wardley-maps-whiteboard-canvas
 page 19

This zone breakdown is to be considered

more a “rule of thumb” than a hard structure
but let’s pin down the considerations that
led us to spread the triangle that way.

● infrastructures and enabling

elements (utilities, components) are
rarely visible in platforms but they
are in some cases, for example in
value chains targeted to
remixers/hackers/makers — in a
direct infrastructure-to-user
relationship;
● technology powered mass
An understanding of the three layers from Cicero’s triangle, in Wardley’s value customization, when characterized
chain map landscape
as low marginal cost process (eg:
internet-enabled sneaker
customization, or parametric design),
also brings long tail consumers directly in touch of a commoditized technological infrastructure — in
another direct infrastructure-to-user relationship;
● on the other hand, it’s rare, but long tail markets can sometimes cover the full stack: think for
example of current ultra-local, community managed value chains like community supported
agriculture.

As a “rule of thumb”, we think that it’s technically possible for each “layer” of Cicero’s triangle — i.e. long
tails, aggregators and infrastructures — to be in every evolutionary state, though the most common
situation surely sees long tails in the user context (personalized, relationship powered experiences), and
aggregators covering most of the intermediate layers of enabling services and channels, bundling the
infrastructural layer and hiding it from ecosystem’s line of sight.

From C-Shape to Z-Shape, the six platform plays

Now that we have introduced the basic elements of thinking that connect Wardley Maps with aggregation
theory we can aim at visualizing some of the major strategic gameplays that are normally used in shaping
the market in platform-like terms. In the hope to simplify understanding, we provide the platform designer,
here in this section, with a recap of the few essential typical value chain transformations that platform
strategies rely on.
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From C-Shape to Z-Shape

If one maps an industrial/pipeline value chain, one gets a C-shaped value chain. Normally, industrial firms
provide solutions (as products, services or utilities) to a massified and replicable customer needs (on the
right of the evolutionary line, not by chance, as it needs to be a universal problem). They often do that by
leveraging proprietary distribution channels - imagine a retail network - sometimes they use more
commoditized channels, out of the firm’s control, e.g. large-scale retail chains, or telco carriers for digital
services. In the latter case the distribution element on the picture would need to be shifted on the right as
well. Sometimes these firms manage the purchasing transactions directly - such as with proprietary
e-commerce sites - other times distributors do that, depending on the type and evolution of goods or
services sold.

The Six recurring Platform Plays and the C-Z transition.

The Six “Platform Plays” are recurring strategic plays that typically characterize a pipeline-to-platform
transformation to unleash the unexpressed potential emerging from an ecosystem. They are part of
transforming an industrial value chain into an aggregated (as in aggregators) value chain. In Wardley Map
terms the transformation brings the C-shaped value chain into a Z-shaped one. These six “movements”
look very natural if executed visually on a Wardley Map.
 page 21

PP1: Bring back

personalization of
experience for
users

If users are being served by commoditized experiences, platforms

ensure to provide “customized” experiences. This implies either
connecting them with producers (see PP2) on top of a standardized
transaction system (see PP3) or to fully control and automatize a
mass-customization process that, in many cases, may lack the capability to
understand fully the context.

This Platform Play is the right one to help you answer the questions:
● Are users in this value chain looking for stronger personalization?
● If not, what would it mean to serve them like that?

PP2. Bring
producers on top of
the Value Chain

If there are a massive amount of producers in this value chain, gaining more
potential to create value (for example by means of a technological
advancement), and if they are “independent” but, at the moment, hidden by an
industrial player (typically as suppliers) or by a frequent mediator (as
 page 22

contractors), they can be brought on top of the value chain and treated as
“users” that must be targeted with excellent experiences and the capability to
specialize in their niche capabilities.

This Platform Play is the right one to help you answer the questions:
● Are producers in this value chain being masked by the industrial players?
● Are producers in this value chain being mediated by marginally
value-adding players?
● Are producers in this value chain gaining capabilities through technology
or other forms of access?
● How can we bring producers on top of the value chain?
● How can we “unbundle” producers from incumbent industrial players
and make them “independent”?

PP3. Standardization
of Transactions

To ensure that producers and consumers can interact at scale, the platform
shaper needs to ensure that all the phases of the peer to peer transactions (e.g.:
selection, handshaking, requirements sharing, booking, purchasing,…), and all
the ancillary activities, are as standardized as possible. On top of standardized
transactions, users can achieve fine grained customizing, thanks to direct
connection, increased information sharing, etc....

This Platform Play helps you answer the questions:

● How would a standardized transaction look like in the context I’m
shaping?
● How can we leave enough space for informal adaptation to the
participants so that they can work with a standardized transaction?
 page 23

PP4. Complex
Business Process
embedded into
Software as a Service

Taking complex and formal elements of a pre-existing complex business process

and making them more accessible (in terms of cost, distribution, etc…) by
codifying them into a “Software as a Service” (SaaS) solution. This essential play
couples with PP3 when contributing to reducing the costs associated with value
transactions and is also key in keeping the rules crystal clear (and well known in
advance) to all the entities and roles willing to leverage their potential through
the platform. Having a SaaS to manage the business process allows users to
self-serve themselves reducing the need for organizational staff helping the
growth and scalability of the platform strategy itself.

This Platform Play helps you answer the questions:

● What elements of this business process can be provided in a software as
a service to be made available?
● What niches would access to a SaaS solution enabled in this context?

PP5. Enable The creation of a system that allows participants to have a confirmed identity,
leveraging on and accumulate reputation (and therefore social capital, trust) ensures that
Identity, Reputation, new-entrants, and smaller players are rapidly able to capitalize on performance
and Trust and social status. Improving reputation and trust in the system in turn influences
the quality of the exchanges in the ecosystem without the need for centralized
vetting and control, further reducing the bureaucratic footprint.

The Platform Play #5 helps you answer the questions:

● How can we facilitate the best to emerge?
● What elements of reputation should we harvest in the subject value
chain?
 page 24

PP6. Aggregation of By aggregating demand (and sometimes supply), platform strategies

Demand (and supply) also overcome the traditional (push) “sales” perspective and move
into “pull”. Network effects drive great attraction to a growing
context of interaction and it is therefore often crucial to aggregate
demand so as to generate a pull effect on the supply (or vice-versa),
in turn generating more demand attraction. This mechanism is crucial to first
start and then keep on feeding the network effects. This
is how platforms grow.

The Platform Play #6 helps you answer the questions:

● How can I control demand and aggregate it as an input channel for this
strategy?
● What elements do I control in order to generate a demand aggregation?

By applying these Platform Plays together (or at least those that are more
relevant and have the greatest impact on the current ecosystem), Platforms can
re-shape the value streams and help leverage unexpressed potential.

An overview of the effects of these Platform Plays is visible in the picture below:

As a result, typically, platform-marketplaces (especially the the most archetypal aggregators, the
“horizontal” ones25) evolve to have more of a Z-shaped value chain (see the picture below).

25
A broader explanation of the different shapes that the value chain takes in vertical and managed marketplaces is
provided in chapter of our New Foundations of Platform ecosystem Thinking whitepaper (See: New Foundations of
Platform-ecosystem Thinking by Boundaryless )
 page 25

From a strategic standpoint the application of these key value chain transformation normally leaves the
aggregators to control essential elements of the value chain (as clarified by the leaf shaped “aggregators”
area in the micro-picture on the right), namely:

● the marketplace (M);

● the transaction handling (T);
● the SaaS (and more generally the “product” side of the platform strategy) (SaaS);
● the reputation and the identity of the participants (ID+Rep).

All of these elements make the aggregator’s strategy more defensible: as an example, all reputation created
on the platform is essentially tied to the platform and normally not portable to other platforms.

Here follows some example of how some notorious platforms apply the six platform plays:

Platform Play Platform How

PP1. Bring back Etsy By making it possible for buyers to get in direct touch with
personalization of creators, allowing them to ask for personalization way beyond
experience for users how much one could have done by buying artisanal craft at pop-up
markets, or distribution shops.

PP2. Bring producers Airbnb By making it possible for great hosts to build a professional
on top of the Value opportunity to grow, manage multiple listings, manage others’
Chain listings Airbnb effectively designed with hosts primarily in mind -
which in the past were never considered core by the systems
aiming at facilitating booking (always travel centric-limited).

PP3. Standardization Airbnb By standardizing the transactions for booking a holiday house /
of Transactions room where in the past the transaction was case-specific, highly
fragmented and inconsistent, fraud prone...
 page 26

PP4. Complex Honeybook Provides a full featured event management service designed with
Business Process the event management profession in mind - collapsing in one place
embedded into offering that formerly have been managed separately - a powerful
Software as a Service way to reduce hassle.

PP5. Enable leveraging Thumbtack By offering pros a way to leverage on their reputation, number of
on Identity, thumbtack hires, years in business...
Reputation and Trust

PP6. Aggregation of Outdoorsy By letting RV and Camper renters to connect freely, it unlocked a
Demand (and supply) massive amount of - often idling - inventories.
/ Yescapa
 page 27

The Exploration Journey

Getting out of the Building
As Steve Blank would suggest: “getting out of the building” and meddling with your ecosystem is going to be
your critical first step in any platform strategy you want to shape and exploration you want to undertake.
All the assumptions that will characterize your mapping and envisioning process will be based on the
understanding of the context you want to shape, and therefore relying heavily on your direct experience of
it. Despite the fact that you’ll be subject to several validation phases further along in the process - such as
with interview based discovery-validation - a preliminary, open interaction with the ecosystem you want to
shape will be essential before, during and after your co-creative design phase.

Don’t underestimate the great importance of involving entities from the ecosystem directly in the
exploration phase: having some of them involved in the mapping activities might boost your adherence to
reality, while still being something you need to ponder (to avoid giving one single user a too large footprint
on your strategic assumptions).

Approaching Exploration
In our direct experience with hundreds of customers, two typical contexts of designing innovative business
models are recurring and can be framed by looking at the 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, which 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 platform thinking
application, 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
 page 28

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); and 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 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 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 find ourselves in this context 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 systems’ maintenance in the aviation industry, a subset of its capabilities can be used to shape
a similar (in terms of needs) industry, like the Civil Railways transportation, or Hospital facilities
management, etc. In that case we should probably consider this an adjacent innovation context (addressing
different markets by leveraging existing capabilities).

B. Product & Service Innovation

Another recurring case is that of an existing player

trying to use a platform approach to organize a
larger ecosystem of interactions that is already
relying 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 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
 page 29

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).

The inextricable mix between the platformization contexts and the organizational one is a teller of how
difficult it is 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.26

Some Definitions: Ecosystems, Arenas and

Platformizations Spaces
The two different “postures” to exploration we’ve introduced above only starts to shape the mother
question we want to answer with this framework and exploration guide: if I have a broad space of opportunity,
where am I supposed to start from?

How and what to prioritize, among the multiple and different interactions I see in the ecosystem and the
possibilities to create a new - or innovate an existing - business model? What part of the ecosystem should I
focus on?

The landscape we find in this space of opportunities, and the subsequent phases/steps we are suggesting to
adopt, are represented in the following figure.

26
For specific implementation of organizational transformations according to the principles of platform thinking,
check the EEEO initiative: Entrepreneurial ecosystem Enabling Organization EEEO Toolkit based on Haier's
Rendanheyi.
 page 30

The Ecosystem:
In our approach to exploration we use the term “ecosystem” to define a broad context of ecosystemic
interactions where many players are trying to achieve their “jobs-to-be-done” without particular
constraints across phases and industries. When an organization approaches the ecosystem, the focus needs
to be put on exploration, mapping the major contexts of value creation and preparing for further
exploration and understanding by decomposing the larger ecosystemic ecosystem into its “arenas”.

The Arena:
In an ecosystem we normally find and isolate different arenas, all interdependent and interconnected in
some way. The concept of arenas has been introduced by Rita McGrath27. According to McGrath strategic
analysis often occurs with companies comparing themselves to others within the same industry while in
modern markets companies should look to another type of more open, overlapped and hard to constrain
space: the arena. More than depending on a traditional approach to defining constraints and benchmarking,
according to McGrath: “arenas are characterized by particular connections between customers and solutions, not
by the conventional descriptions of offerings that are near substitutes for one another” therefore hinting more
towards markets or customer groups that the company is targeting in that specific moment, which may not
have anything to do with the traditional framing of industry.

In our “ecosystemic” framing, each arena is composed of:

Multiple two-sided relationships, or even multi-sided relationships, between entities that engage in
achieving certain clusters of jobs-to-be-done28.

So, the first challenge we are requested to face is how to trace the boundaries of these arenas, and how to
spot the arena that is relevant to us in the larger ecosystem. At the arena level we can eventually go beyond
mapping and we can dive into understanding how value is perceived, how evolution works and - at the end

27
Rita McGrath's Big Idea - ecosystems see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fZh5s58L8A
28
Jobs to be done have been framed differently in history. This blog post offers a good coverage
https://jtbd.info/know-the-two-very-different-interpretations-of-jobs-to-be-done-5a18b748bd89 for the sake of this
reading, we generally refer to Tony Ulwick’s definition as what a group of people are trying to accomplish in a given
situation.
 page 31

of the day - construct the value chain and hypothesize how we can interact and transform it through the Six
Platform Plays that have been introduced above.

The Platformization Space:

Shortly after we have selected the arena to focus on and understood how value is perceived, another key
challenge - or milestone - comes up: to find out if there could be sub-arena systems where different
platform strategies can be set. This question will be addressed later on in the guide, although it’s important
to define what we define as a “platformization space”.

A “platformization space” is a system of multiple interrelated two-sided relationships, a context where a

positively shaping narrative can be built, and aggregation can be put in place to overcome fragmentation of
experiences.
 page 32

A quick option: Impromptu Platform Exploration

An important disclaimer: the following sections of the guide will go through all the steps introduced
above and explain how to use our framework for a structured approach to exploration. Here in this
section we present a much leaner and less structured approach to go through a quick “reality” check to
assess your approach to opportunity exploration that we call Impromptu Platform Exploration.

The reader should consider Impromptu Platform Exploration as a quick option that doesn’t capture the
full potential of the exploration process but that can turn out to be useful - especially as a first
envisioning iteration, or when time doesn’t allow for deeper reasoning -. Nevertheless we suggest the
shaper that approaches a strategic opportunity to explore the full depth of the exploration process as
presented later in the document.

In some cases a preliminary, impromptu, step is worth to quickly scan at a very high level the
“platform-izability” of the context. Impromptu Platform Exploration is especially useful if you ou are in the case
we described before as “B”: you’re playing in with a context/ecosystem where maybe you’re already
providing some services, you identify one or more other roles, and you want to understand where the other
potential opportunities to “platformize” the space are.

You can of course use this lean process also if you fall into case A, although the need to perform a deeper
exploration of the context (ecosystem→ arena→ platformization space) would probably be more pressing
since more choices would be possible. The more structured Platform Opportunity Exploration approach
will be explained in the following section.

For the impromptu process, we mainly use two tools: the Platform Strategy Navigator Canvas and the
Platform Brief Canvas. Both the tools reflect the three layers of our Unified Market Theory (i.e. the Cicero’s
Triangle). The first one features two main information elements: on the left, key aspects related to
understanding aggregation - mainly the key differentiators operating for the success of the players at each
layer - and on the right, the key questions we need to address to understand if the arena we’re quickly
assessing is really providing platformization opportunities. The Platform Brief Canvas provides a space to
answer those questions and to explore what we call “WHAT IF” scenarios, which can be generated by the
applications of the Platformization Patterns we’ll present below.

From top to bottom, the first area is about the long tail and it helps you assess if the need for consumers
and producers exists to look for more personalised experiences. If consumers are looking for a more
custom, tailor-made experiences on the other side, producers are looking to specialize in a certain niche; if
technology is substantially contributing to reduce the transaction costs (i.e. reducing the entry barriers or
frictions) and thus inviting smaller and smaller producers of value to start exchanging value (that was not
sustainable before), you are in an ecosystem where the ecosystem mobilization approach makes a perfect
sense.

The second area is guiding you through the exploration of aggregation opportunities. If the observed
ecosystem shows the presence of intermediaries, brokers, connectors or other platforms that are providing
support to improve the connections between producers and consumers of value, and/or if we are aware of
relevant supply/resources/assets that can be attracted, organized, turned to be more evident and
accessible to the entities, then there’s space for a new aggregating strategy.
 page 33

The third area, infrastructures, helps to identify modules, components, and building blocks that are
available to the aggregator (or Platform shaper) to build the platform itself, and provide these components,
resources, or underutilized assets to the niche players, which can use the infrastructure in a re-organized
and more efficient way. It’s important that we map the different players in this area and not only the
producers and consumers, since Platforms can offer a better interface also to help the ecosystem organise
and prioritise the availability of these building blocks that - rebundled - will constitute the supporting,
enabling and empowering services “core” of the Platform infrastructure.
 page 34

After having quickly mapped the landscape emerging from the ecosystem, we will use a complementary
toolset: the Patterns of Platformization29. These twelve cards describe recurring patterns of system
transformation that happen usually as part of a platformization strategy and can act as brainstorming
igniters, to help shapers create impact scenarios.

The envisioning of the impacts and evolutionary trajectories of the analysed ecosystem (arena) through the
application of the successful strategies described in the Patterns cards - is a precious tool that gives you
some relevant pieces of information.

Besides running what-if scenarios to quickly envision options available for the development of your
platform strategy in impromptu platform thinking, you can also use the Pattern cards together with other
KPI/Assets/Metrics as a filter that guides the selection of the arena in the structured ecosystem
exploration - more on this later.

As a matter of fact, you will naturally tend to consider more those patterns that are relevant to your
organization, according to your knowledge and sensitivity of the ecosystem and of the emerging
opportunity, and based on your assets and strengths.

29
You can download pattern cards from here: http://platformdesigntoolkit.com/patterns-of-platformization
 page 35

The Patterns of Platformization Table

High barriers to entry as a producer (licenses, upfront investments, access to
infrastructure, tools you need or processes you need to master) create high barriers for
consumers. Open to more risky options, cheaper producers (less professional) can help
grow a bigger market.
---
Providing access to shared medical imaging devices or assets (like Medneo is doing), can
open new possibilities to young practitioners, helping them grow their patient base
without the need for infrastructure.

When a network of professional producers deals with a complex workflow - involving

many partners - and no service/software exists (or not an integrated solution) to
empower the work, there’s an opportunity to attract them to a shared market-network
space where to capitalize relationships.
---
Honeybook provides a fully fledged solution to event organizers where they can connect,
manage and pay third party specific providers to organize great events.

Experiences available on the market are too uniform, massified, and non personalized
(provided mostly by industrial players).
There’s the possibility to connect niche producers with niche consumers and leverage on
independent providers to enable niche experiences with a growing quality.
---
By creating the concept of application marketplace, Apple gave space to the independent
developer ecosystem to create perfectly personalized smartphone experiences with niche
apps, with quality assurance.

As workforce is available to be leveraged and potential and talent abounds, you can help
non-professional to professionalize helping a new role in the market emerge.
---
Airbnb created several new jobs by professionalizing hosts, into superhosts, travel
experience providers, housing concierges, etc....

Every time you limit the reach of your strategy you self impose a limitation: always ask if
it makes strict sense or not. If not, avoid. Explore together adjacent markets or
geographies, don't limit your strategy to involve a particular class or type of participants.
---
Why to create a platform strategy to mobilize the market of organizing football matches,
and not to include... volleyball?

Relationships and interactions are key for the platform organization: it's not enough to
focus on creating experiences for consumers; you need to involve producers to achieve
impact at scale. Plus, one producer can normally serve many consumers.
---
Etsy really changed the market of artisanal jewelry when it started focusing on the
artisans.
 page 36

If you provide a product or service today, explore the potential to transform your
customers into participants in an ecosystem, climbing the value chain by mobilizing the
market that sits on top of your products. Always look up!
---
You may be selling a product for sailing - say, clothing or food - but why don’t think about
organizing sailing trips, regattas or learning how to sail?

When producers compete over similar services and there’s no visibility of reputation,
this may generate a race to the bottom: producers’ services can become commodities.
Let the best emerge by leveraging reputation and differentiate by quality.
---
Short term rentals existed before Airbnb: the company unleashed the power of hosts’
reputation letting them leverage on it, to attract more and more renters.

If a relevant upfront capital is needed to be able to provide value, if infrastructure is not

used at its fullest potential, and still many producers need to invest separately, then
there’s a potential in creating a shared infrastructure and growing a marketplace of
services on top of it.
---
The Airbnb shared booking, payment and house portfolio management system made short
term rentals appealing to many more hosts: now, eventually, talented hosts without a
house also have the possibility to also provide value.

Assets and capabilities are available bundled in the market, potentially due to legal,
policy or just traditional cultural behaviors. There's an opportunity to unbundle them,
creating liquidity, reducing transaction cost. Unbundling assets reduces transaction cost,
making smaller transactions appealing.
---
Velox.Re (among others) is trying to unbundle the housing market (homes as integrated
assets with strong limitations to trade, high transaction cost) for fractional tradability

When different market niches don’t share a common context, impeding network effects,
there’s the potential to create an aggregation that de-fragments user experiences across
the different niches and multiply the possibility for producers to connect with the RIGHT
consumers, and vice versa.
---
MyTaxi, integrated the Taxi experience across Europe: heavy users such as business
travelers, access taxi services easily, without having to download local apps. In this case
MyTaxi connected geographically disjointed niches..

As a producer of services, you can transform competitors into providers by becoming an

aggregator: you should know the work of the producers very well, and therefore be able
to build an attracting value proposition.
---
Example: as an experienced book editor - (who knows the process well) you may want to
create a platform for supporting authors in self publishing (with editors, printing services,
etc...).
 page 37

A structured approach to Platform Opportunity

Exploration
When the circumstances allow for a deeper understanding of the ecosystem, aiming to gather the most
relevant information about opportunities that could possibly emerge from the ecosystem in its broadest
terms, we have developed and tested a more structured and guided approach, which is presented from this
point on.

The step-by-step process presented here has been tested and validated on the field with many adopters
involved in the platform opportunity exploration phase, and proved to be effective.

The objective of a structured Platform Opportunity Exploration process is normally to give the teams
involved:

● stronger awareness of the context they’re looking forward to shape;

● a preliminary understanding of their transient competitive advantage, if any, in shaping that context
(following different possible scenarios);
● an understanding of the key entities and players existing in the ecosystem;
● a much better understanding of how value is perceived across the several value chains involved and
how those value chains can be transformed through platformization.

The output of this phase is a clear setup of the starting point for the application of the Platform Design
process, including:
● the set of entities to be considered in the initial ecosystem canvas for each platformization space
emerged;
● a rough idea and description of potential scenarios;
● information about other platforms, aggregators, dominant players in the framed context;
● what the transactions to be standardized are;
● key traits of the SaaS/Product side of the platform strategy;

and more.

In the following sections we’re going to guide you through the step-by-step process. Consider that the
analysis flow presented here is a qualitative approach, with some numerical and quantitative elements used
as filters to find the hot spots where there’s the highest potential to be mobilized with a platform strategy.
By its nature, this process requires an iterative approach. The more you repeat the whole or part of the
process, the deeper you go in the analysis, and the outputs and insights emerged are richer and more
diverse.
In every step of the process, we are going to introduce the theoretical framework, and then we will apply
the step to one or more examples to clarify all the shades with a practical approach.
 page 38

The Example context we’re going to use

We’re going to use mainly these two “contexts” in the flow.

Case #1 - The agriculture-related ecosystem

This is a very broad ecosystem made of multiple key arenas, and it represents the perfect example since it’s complex
enough but at the same time familiar to many (at least in its main systems and processes). We are exactly talking
about the whole industry that is starting from the soil preparation stage and goes up to the final transformation and
transportation of food to mass distribution.

Case #2 - Independent green and renewable power prosumer (e.g. producing it with solar panels, etc.)
Thanks to the plummeting cost of solar technology and the pressure for new local sources of energy, the market of
investing in, and installing, prosumer solar infrastructure and being connected with the energy trading network is
ripe for growth. On the other hand, this market is still very industrial and mostly in the hands of energy incumbents.
What would it mean to draw a platform strategy to grow and empower the potential of distributed networks of
expert advisors, technology installers, and prosumers?

Case 1 is perfect to show and clarify to you the first part of the workflow, from the ecosystem to the arena
identification, while the case 2 will be used more to show in detail the value chain analysis and
transformation result of applying the six Platform Plays.
 page 39

The Step-by-Step Opportunity Exploration Process

0 Identifying the ecosystem and its arenas
If you’re approaching exploration at a very high level and you want to
find your opportunity in an entire ecosystem, the first thing to do is to
hypothesize an initial idea of what the ecosystem looks like. This step
can be performed through a quick research on documentation
available, and can be based on your awareness of the ecosystem itself.
This step will be highly iterative, since we’re also using the following
steps (1 and 2) to depict it clearer, and repeat until all the arenas have
been identified.

1 Scanning the ecosystem

With the ecosystem Scan, the team will visualize the ecosystem signals
ensuring a common understanding of all the current behaviours and
experiences available in the ecosystem. Furthermore, all ecosystem
components, entities and elements will be mapped along a layered
abstraction of the market (long tail markets, aggregation elements and
infrastructures).

2 Identifying leverageable assets and moats

By identifying the main patterns that can play out, the leverageable
assets and the incumbent moats (existing players, advantages,
dominant positions), the designer will be fully aware of the key
elements that need to be analyzed in depth - in value chain/value
perception terms - and for which she needs to understand the
evolutionary dynamics.

3 Choosing the arena to focus on

By applying some decision support elements like the ability to
leverage key assets or capabilities, strategic objectives, the evaluation
of financial indicators such as the total addressable market, you can
choose the arena to focus on and prepare for a deep analysis of the
related value chains. Note that the arena is based on multiple 2-sided
relationships.

4 Translating everything into the Wardley Map

After the reference arena has been identified, it’s time to map the
ecosystem experiences into the Wardley maps, and evaluate their
current evolution status.
 page 40

5 Applying the Six Platform Plays

By applying the Platform Plays, you can transform the initial value
chain and envision how it could look like in a platform context. This
envisioning process is giving back many useful insights about: the main
entities, the transactions that should be standardized, the demand
aggregation opportunities, etc. All these elements will help you to
draw a “target” value chain that you’ll need to enable by designing a
platformization strategy though the later strategy design process.

6 Identifying value chains and the platformization

space and prepare for the platform design
process
Once you have identified the target arena’s value chain and applied
platform transformation, this phase will allow you to dig deeper to
understand if this target context could be better seen as composed of
“subsystem”, multiple “platformization spaces” that will help you
design for more streamlined and focused opportunities.
 page 41

0. Identifying the ecosystem and its arenas

As we’ve anticipated already, the two major contexts or perspectives of business model innovation through
platforms are often the Products & Services Innovation and the Ecosystem Mobilization.

If you are considering the former case, you are probably already familiar with your industry and you’re
positioned along a specific value chain, so you are normally not asking yourself the very open question:
“having such a huge ecosystem and so many possibilities, where am I really supposed to start from? How can I take
advantage of the best opportunity?” since you have a starting point - your products or services - you can use it
as a compass in the selection of the possibilities. Later, in the explanation of the more general process (that
refers to the blank page starting ecosystem mobilization) we will provide evidence of how the two
perspectives may differ (page 43).

If you’re exploring in more general terms - without necessarily referring to products and services you
already provide - or you’re just not necessarily considering them as a starting point you probably have a
broader set of contexts to explore, and you may need to define an initial subset of the space to explore.
Existing services and products may still be tracked as assets to be leveraged in a more open process of
exploration.

In this case, the initial step we normally take is to map the various components of an ecosystem or industry
- with the aim of identifying some type of arena the context can be broken down into.

A potential way to address this initial context

constraining would be to identify phases
(when you can establish a before/after or a
cause/effect relationship), they typically
represent well framed arenas.

If we apply this to the agriculture related

ecosystem, it’s easy to draw this list of
phases - arenas starting from the global
value chain of this industry:

- Systematization of the field (i.e.

giving access to the cultivation area
and bring there the primary services)
- Soil preparation (chemicals, building
and preparation)
- Planting and growing veggies (from
seeds to the plant, involving
workforce management, etc.)
- Harvesting (not only mechanically,
but involving human labour
coordination)
- Transportation (from the field to the
factory, but this arena recurs often in
other phases)
- Factory, food transformation,
storage, or food preparation to be
directly sold. Examples are:
 page 42

extracting juices, packaging, sauces,

syrups, alcohol or fermentation
process production, mechanical
transformation like flour, etc.

We referred to them as phases, as

anticipated, since farming has a typical
industrial approach, with siloed and
scheduled activities that are repeating
seasonally, and this is a good hint.

Other alternative ways to fragment an

ecosystem may be found in “layers” (with one
arena enabling the other) calling for a slicing
of the ecosystem in horizontal layers that may
be more suited to look for potential
platformization opportunities.
Another alternative way to identify an arena may be more heavily based on clustering jobs-to-be-done and
this is something we’re going to explore in the next section.

Practical Steps Guidelines:

● Start from drawing the arenas you’re aware of.
● List arenas as phases, sectors, layers or or clusters of jobs-to-be-done, experiences.

Other suggestions:
This is a very preliminary tentative at fragmenting the ecosystem into arenas. If you have no elements
for this initial mapping, just go to the next step and try to resegment the arenas after the initial
ecosystem scanning activities (more in details later).

Three essential Tips and Tricks:

● Describe textually the ecosystem you’re willing to explore and define if the main players are
involved into different markets, phases, sequences
● If you’ve familiarity with one arena (if, for instance, you’re already playing in it, with your products
and services, or consuming some of them as a user) list it and add what happens before or after it,
or what generates inputs for it, and where are its outputs going

What do you have at the end? How’s this connected with the rest?
You have a really preliminary picture of the Dealing with the scoping of an ecosystem, an
landscape of arenas that are composing the entire market, or industry is confusing. Finding
ecosystem. You will challenge this picture a lot initial boundaries is a good approach to reduce the
during the next steps, but it’s a good starting point complexity and start to analyse it
to evaluate your initial perception, afterwards.
 page 43

1. Scanning the ecosystem:

Platform experiences are essentially a mix of entity to entity direct interactions (transactions) and platform
to entity provided services, designed to enable and empower, and to generate continuous learning and
improvement. In these regards, one organization that looks into a market to implement a platform powered
ecosystem mobilization strategy, needs to understand what the ecosystem is trying to achieve, and in what
ways. As our Platform Design Principle #2 — Design For Emergence30 explains, it’s not possible to
manufacture an ecosystem. Similarly to avoid designing solutions for problems that don’t exist, designing a
strategy to mobilize — a platform —for an ecosystem that is not there (to be mobilized), is a self-fulfilling
prophecy of failure.

Platform strategies need to be designed to help an existing ecosystem to emerge, thrive and work better:
platform design is the equivalent of plugging wires between electric potential. Where a potential exists, the
current flows. Platform Design is the death of inside-out strategies: you never start from your capabilities,
your assets, or your identity in designing a strategy, you instead think about how these can be leveraged to
help you create a strategy that serves an existing ecosystem, exchanging value. In the ecosystem lies the
center of your strategy.

The ecosystem of short-term rental existed for ages, before Airbnb: all
was clumsy, complicated, and reputation was hard to leverage.
Designing for this existing ecosystem helped Airbnb thrive at a scale that
wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.

Whether or not an established platform (aggregator) player exists in the context we’re exploring, most of
the experiences one can spot in the market see four types of parties involved:
● peer producers and partners (suppliers of value),
● peer consumers (consumers of value),
● mediators (like brokers, supporters, facilitators, aggregators,...)
● infrastructures, commodities and building blocks.

30
“The 7 Key Principles of Platform Design” Available at:
https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/7-key-platform-design-principles-d84cc78b9218
 page 44

As it’s easy to see, we can map these parties according to the layers of Cicero’s triangle (the Unified Market
Theory we derived thanks to our research in the field of platform economy):

Long Tail Markets Here, producers and consumers of value find their natural place. Niches of
entities exchanging value will be supported by the aggregator to unleash
their potential.

Aggregators Here, entities that currently play any role of “trusted advisors” for
(Platforms) consumers and “talent agents” for producers, can possibly be superseded by
a platform strategy that would be more efficient in reducing transaction
cost, and incubate learning.

Infrastructures Here, price sensitive elements that are used to create new propositions,
modules and consumable products and services, can probably be
consolidated and subject to major efficiency shifts, making the case for
economies of scale.

As the reader can see, Cicero’s triangle layers are reflected in the Ecosystem Scan structure. The Ecosystem
Scan has been designed to be an easy tool to help you contextualize what you see happening in the
ecosystem and it doesn’t need to be taken as too constraining.
 page 45

Practical Steps Guidelines:

● You will change the position of the elements very frequently at the beginning. Be sure you’re
using a tool that allows you to do so easily (sticky notes if you’re on paper, a collaborative
kanban/whiteboard if online)
● Start by enumerating the most important (in terms of frequency, value, etc.) experiences,
happening in the ecosystem or ecosystem, among the most relevant entities or roles
● Start to add post-its and connect them as you see an interaction happening.

Other suggestions:
Especially in case you’re exploring contexts that are radically new to you, for new ideas/opportunities
you may have, be sure to interview or consult - in this preliminary analysis process - a domain expert that
can optimize your learning curve. In any case, whether you're an expert or not, it’s always a good idea to
either involve (some of) the real entities in the ecosystem scanning phase, and to preliminary validate
the main elements emerged from the mapping through a replicable interview script.

Once you map an element, ask yourself if it sits on the top (is a small, peer entity, looking for
personalized solutions or to express a particular niche potential), in the middle (mediating, brokering,
connecting, facilitating already the connection between producers and consumers) or in the below part
(utilities, building blocks, modules)?

If you’re applying this step because you want to mobilize an ecosystem and you’re exploring the
different phases or more generally - arenas you’ve segmented the ecosystem into, you will probably
map in the upper layer of the canvas roles that are very broad: if you think to the example of the
agriculture ecosystem, you will have farmers, soil preparation workforce, fertilizers and seeds
producers, heavy machines and tools rentals, etc. This is normal, since we’re observing the ecosystem
from a very high initial point of view and we need to identify arenas that are composed of multiple
2-sided relationships of value themselves.
Let’s now look into the independent renewable energy production example introduced before. If we start
by listing the main experiences that we find in the arena around home installations we can enumerate a
series of jobs-to-be-done such as:

● choosing products and installers;

● financing the installation;
● performing the installation of the system;
● connecting the solar energy system to the grid;

We can see that the typical interaction is between the consumer, who wants to install a new PV system in
her property (we can imagine because she wants to waive the cost of energy, or make some extra money as
an investment), and a solution provider (essentially a company that can technically install a certain
solution). The contact point is typically through a web search, sometimes through a “solution advisor” who
could be a professional working in that field (an engineer, an architect, a construction company).
 page 46

Let’s now look at how these clustered experiences would be mapped on the Ecosystem Scan:

Three essential Tips and Tricks:

● Most likely you’ll first map different macro clusters of jobs-to-be-done, and the contexts will be
coming up naturally: as soon as this information is becoming visible, try to name the clusters of
actions or experiences with labels that can help define the arenas. Remember that one arena
could be defined as a set of jobs-to-be-done clusters that show a certain coherence. In the
example above the whole set of four labels are pretty coherent around a core phase and point of
view: the user who needs installation.
● Play with the canvas freely and see then how arenas emerge: these could be partial phases of a
complex set of interactions or other types of clusters;
● It’s important to do the scanning after you got “out of the building” (at least through a round of
informal, open-ended interviews) with representatives of your ecosystem, or even to get them to
participate in the mapping exercise. You’ll need to know the context to catch the ecosystem
signals.

What do you have at the end? How’s this connected with the rest?
You’ll have a clear understanding of the major This will be the basis to imagine how
contexts of interaction available in the ecosystem, platformization can play out, by identifying
the emerging behaviours, all the entities involved dominating entities that have successfully built
and how these lay down on a layered market view. advantage moats, and by providing a basis for
The scanning of an ecosystem helps you identify rethinking the value chain through experience
the phases that correspond to arenas. shaping gameplays.
 page 47

2. Identifying Leverageable Assets and Moats

After having pictured the main experiences you are aware of about the analysed ecosystem or ecosystem,
it’s useful to add more elements of information that contribute to give us a clearer understanding of the
context and, in one of the next steps, the same elements will be the metrics we can use to pick the most
valuable arena we want to focus on.

It’s important to map relevant assets and capabilities that emerge in your organisation cause they can be
instrumental to tell you if you can foresee an advantage or you can leverage them through your platform
strategy. We also map the presence of moats/dominant players in this step because - as well - identifying an
existing moat can be a powerful information element for the strategist who wants to develop a credible
strategy: moats can be avoided, approached as partners, etc… the most important thing being: they
shouldn’t go unnoticed. Both assets and moats are important elements we can consider as information
elements to help us choose what specific arena to pick as the first and most promising one in terms of
platform opportunities.

Moats (pictured as tower icons) can be identified as dominant players in the ecosystem: any role or entity
that has an established and recognized role in the ecosystem that is hard to displace.

Examples of a moat are, for instance:

● established sources of demand (demand aggregators);
● established sources of supply (supply aggregators);
● regulated/permissioned players (players that own the right to play a specific role in the system, due
to existing regulations).

If we look at the example above, web search is obviously a moat (think Google). We have other moats in the
financing and connection experiences: banks (that have relevant access to capital), or the national power
distribution grid agencies that are typically established and entitled by law.

With regards to assets, there are several methodologies

you can use to list and prioritise your main assets and
capabilities, among which we suggest you to run a quick
VRIO analysis, that is described in the dedicated Box #3
below.

Mapping your assets and capabilities on the ecosystem

Scan canvas adds key insights to the exploration of the
ecosystem. Most specifically having identified assets
and moats can guide in the choice of which arena (or
sub-arena) you should focus on for the next steps of
designing the aggregation, platform strategy.

We used the “bow and arrow icon” to identify visually

where our assets are: in the given example we are imagining being a manufacturing company that (even not
specifically active on solar yet) by planning a move into the solar electrification market, could consider its
production capabilities a leverageable asset.
 page 48

Box 3 - The VRIO Canvas

A good and simple framework to map the existing assets/advantages of an organization is the VRIO
framework. This framework is extremely well-known and documented, and is based on listing all the
assets and capabilities of the organization, and then submit these assets to these four questions (from
wikipedia):

● The Question of Value: “Is the firm able to exploit an opportunity or neutralize an external threat
with the resource/capability?”
● The Question of Rarity: “Is control of the resource/capability in the hands of a relative few?”
● The Question of Imitability: “Is it difficult to imitate, and will there be significant cost
disadvantage to a firm trying to obtain, develop, or duplicate the resource/capability?”
● The Question of Organization: “Is the firm organized, ready, and able to exploit the
resource/capability?”

The process to run a VRIO analysis is simple, yet in case of large organisations can be also long, since it
will include all the assets and capabilities that are judged relevant. In any case, the first thing to do is to
list all these elements of value, maybe during collaborative brainstorming sessions. All items, one by one,
have to be submitted to the four questions. Normally, assets pass the tests gradually: therefore an asset
that passes the “I” question also has to pass the “V” and “R” before; an asset should be first deemed
valuable, then rare, and finally inimitable before asking if you’re organized to exploit it, maybe in a
platform strategy.

All the assets that are judged VRIO must then be added to the ecosystem Scan beside the related entity
or action, and in the right layer of the Unified Market Theory triangle.
The VRIO Canvas is part of the Platform Opportunity Exploration Download pack.
 page 49

Practical Steps Guidelines:

● Identify the moats, as established sources of demand or supply (aggregators) and
regulated/permissioned players (players that own the right to play a specific role in the system,
due to existing regulations);
● Evaluate your assets with any approach (e.g. VRIO) and then position them in the Ecosystem
Scan near to the elements you mapped previously

Other suggestions:
Coming back to the Energy Production example, moats are in the Web search (Google), in financial
institutions (that can lend you money, maybe in direct relationship with institutions that are regulating
the context and are distributing incentives to meet the renewable energy quota production), as well as
institutions or regulators that are eventually approving the connection of your system to the (public)
grid.

Just to stress this point: in your strategy to mobilise the renewable energy production ecosystem, you
shouldn’t think about replacing Google as the main search engine, or to become a bank and issue loans
for your customers (unless in your assets, you have a massive financial capability…) but seeing that the
financial capability provides a moat might trigger a certain attention into answering the question about
what we could do to facilitate and streamline the interaction with such moats.
 page 50

Three essential Tips and Tricks:

● Look at your assets at any level of the picture: they could be for example users cohorts you can
reach (top layer), facilitating activities you can perform (middle layer), or technologies you could
use and infrastructures you own (lower layer).
● To understand moats better, seek for alternative routes that can enable the same value flows. If
they do not exist, most likely a solid moat is present.
● Moats are often related to: incumbents, regulated players, and players that can leverage either
economies of scale (lower marginal costs depending on size) and network effects.

What do you have at the end? How’s this connected with the rest?
You’ll have a greater awareness of your strengths The previous step helped you mapping the most
and of incumbent players in the market. This relevant clusters of jobs-to-be-done, available
awareness can be at the ecosystem level and give experiences; this one is adding a deeper layer of
you clarity on which arenas are composing it and information that will help you choose where to
what is the best to choose for the next steps, or at focus first.
arena level thus guiding you in the identification of
the most valuable 2-sided relationship that is your
platform space for the design phase.
 page 51

3. Choosing the arena to focus on

After the scanning phase, the genuine explorer may end up with a significant amount of information.
Especially if one comes from the perspective of exploring the ecosystem without a particular focus on
already provided products and services, the opportunity space may be daunting. The clusters of
jobs-to-be-done you have mapped may not be easy to lead you into understanding a specific value chain:
too much variety, too many players. This is the step in the process when, essentially, one should use the
information mapped on the canvases - including the presence of assets and moats - to refine the arena in the
ecosystem where to focus.

As said above, macro-phases may provide a way to define the different arenas making up the more complex
ecosystem. Alternatively, an arena may be drawn around a process centered around a certain “customer” or
user (like in the example above, with macro blocks of jobs-to-be-done clustered to form an arena around a
customer looking to install a certain solution on her rooftop, from search to connection to the grid.

Once a preliminary arena scope is found - you could end up with several ones especially if your initial
mapping has been ranging widely in the ecosystem - the problem is to prioritize and choose where to focus
to analyze value chain, and setup a potential platformization process, around a system of relationships.

To evaluate which arena is the best option to start from, some easy rules of thumb apply. The elements you
can consider in the decision making are essentially four:
 page 52

1. the presence of leverageable assets;

2. the lack of moats;
3. the strategic interest of the organization;
4. last but not least - the market opportunity, often expressed through understanding the so-called
Total Addressable Market (TAM)31.

The presence of leverageable assets is probably the most intuitive element, since the assets you have are
the key expression of your focus on that arena, which you’re already part of and playing a role in.
As we said before, your intent to mobilise the ecosystem could well start from the will and opportunity to
leverage your existing assets in an adjacent market (in the P&S innovation perspective).

Lack of moats and dominant players is also an important element in the decision-making process. It’s useful
to evaluate where these moats are, with respect to the three layers of the Cicero’s triangle. As a general
rule, whenever it is possible to select the arena we want to focus on that is free of moats, it’s better because
we have more freedoms to act, like moving in a blue ocean strategy. This is the rule of the thumb especially
if the moats we’ve mapped are in the aggregator’s layer, that is most likely the area of inference where your
platform strategy can focus more, and having a moat there that is already brokering or aggregating
resources is risky. If moats are in the infrastructure layers, you can evaluate if you see opportunities to turn
these moats into partners or entities that will exchange value through your platform strategy, thus
providing value to the strategy.

The Patterns of Platformization we introduced above can also be useful proxies to the decision: a key
question you could ask could indeed be: “how can I leverage my assets and capabilities, or displace moats,
through the application of a certain pattern? What would be the scenario in this case?”. If we look back at the
prosumer energy example, an unbundling of the financial capability to provide capital from banks and
financial institutions and its rebundling into a facilitated process32 may be a good “What if” scenario to play
with related to Pattern E10 presented above.

Practical Steps Guidelines:

● label all the jobs to be done you’ve identified and try to cluster them into arenas;
● double check all the important information you’ve mapped: assets, moats;
● add considerations on TAM or savings expectations related to a certain arena;
● think about what scenarios certain “patterns of platformization” could generate in a certain
arena.

Suggestions:
Use all the information you’ve available on the mapped context and always try to validate such
information and assumptions by interacting with the real entities from the ecosystem: formally mapping
and exploring a context should follow a certain familiarity with it, ideally by direct knowledge.

One essential Tip:

● mapping and unbundling an ecosystem into its interdependent arena is an highly iterative

31
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_addressable_market
32
as described in “The Next Frontier for 2-Sided Marketplaces: How Fintech Will Unlock Enormous Value”
https://www.nfx.com/post/fintech-enabled-marketplaces/
 page 53

process, and a new element of understanding can push you to rethink the whole picture: don’t be
afraid to reiterate the process multiple times;

What do you have at the end? How’s this connected with the rest?
After this step, you’ve identified which is the arena This step is the starting moment to deep dive into
you want to focus on, progressing with a deeper the Wardley Map value chain analysis. We are not
analysis of the value chain. The arena represents ready yet to start with the strategy design, since
the most promising system of interaction where to the arena is composed of multiple 2-sided
start designing your platform strategy. relationships. The next steps will address this
challenge.

Additional reads, from our blog:

Our Growth Landscape Series

This blog series (especially issue 1 and 2) will help you figure out additional considerations on how to
select your arena.

Read it here: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/growth-landscape

 page 54

4. Translating everything into the Wardley Map

In this section we’ll explain how one can — starting from the ecosystem scan — move into Wardley value
chain mapping, identifying the emerging contexts and how aggregation strategies can play out, using the
major set of common evolutions (Genesis, Custom Built, Product, Commodity). This is not intended as a strict
guideline, but this process has proved to be a real awareness booster when used, and can set the tone for
the platform exploration and design process.

In the Platform Opportunity Guide download pack, the reader will find a styled template of a Wardley Map
as follows in the image below. To understand in detail how Wardley Maps are normally used, we encourage
the reader to rely on the already provided resources33.

At this point in the process you should have mapped several jobs-to-be-done on one or multiple ecosystem
Scan canvases that you believe make sense as a coherent arena. Together with the jobs to be done, all the
ancillary information as the existing moats and leverageable assets should be available. Our job now is to
translate all the information into the Wardley Map as a preliminary step to understanding the value chain
(or the multiple value chains) for the given arena.

Let’s see how we build the value chain from the information collected in the ecosystem Scan and later we
will evaluate later how to separate, segment and re-focus on the different - possibly overlapped - value
chains.

33
“Understand context and diminish risk: How to build your first Wardley Map with RealtimeBoard. [online] Available
at: https://realtimeboard.com/blog/wardley-maps-whiteboard-canvas/
 page 55

Before doing this, let’s recall a few points of attention on the Wardley Map. The Y-axis shows the “visibility
towards the user”, meaning that the entity or activity that is positioned in the upper part of the map is
perceived as more valuable and visible by the end user than the elements in the lower part.

The final user(s) is indeed at the

very top end of the upper part of
the map and is connected to the
use value she is seeking. As we’ve
already discussed in previous
chapters, a typical industrial
value chain, based on a pipeline
business model, will have its
element connected in such a way
that the value provided by the
suppliers and components is in
the lower-right part of the
picture: the way an industrial
business builds value up is also
through concealing the value
produced by its suppliers, which are effectively hidden and controlled to keep control on margins and
profitability.

Furthermore we suggest to unbundle as much as possible the components and activities when moving
them onto the Wardley Map. We want to always identify the basic and atomic components that are
contributing to generate value so that these elements can be transformed by the Platform Plays in the next
steps. As an example, moving a gym from the scan to the map, should also go through unbundling the
instructor, the machines and the real estate, and assigning all of them the right stage of evolution.
Unbundling (and rebundling) is, after all, a central tenet of platform-ecosystem thinking.

Practical Steps Guidelines:

● Focus on the visibility first (Y-axis), move everything in the map and then choose the level of
evolution (X-axis) as a second step;
● Go from the upper part to the lower part;
● When moving elements from the Scan to the Wardley map, think if you can unbundle them into
their components.

Suggestions:
It’s hard to provide the reader with a strict process in this passage of the awareness building process,
therefore we’ll pick the example presented before in the document and show the process on the fly.
 page 56

Let’s now look back into the example:

Note that solution providers are effectively hiding manufacturers from the consumer line of sight, the
manufacturers or de-specialized workforces. This is contributing to an inefficient distribution of
opportunities and keeps the entry barriers to these investments high, causing a loss of opportunities to the
entire system.

The entities we listed in the previous paragraph that belong to the upper layer of the ecosystem Scan, i.e.
the long tail, are:
● the prosumer (i.e. the consumer of the services in this arena, willing to pay for installing the PV
solution at her home);
● the solution provider that effectively performs the niche installation.

The prosumer’s need is currently answered through essentially standardized solutions (mostly presented
through advisors) and therefore the prosumer should be mapped towards the right edge of the product
segment (solution as a “product”), while the providers sit more in the left side as installation companies are
often “custom built” (SMBs) and operate with their specific processes.

The supply chain of the solution, like the producers of photovoltaic panels and other components, is
definitely hidden in the line of sight of the value for the final consumer (that is, not paying for a specific
brand, but for performance) and they are often considered pure commodities since the selection heuristics
typically is on the lowest price. The same for the utility network, which is by definition a utility and with non
 page 57

negotiable conditions and price: they are the same for everyone. These elements go to the bottom part of
the value chain.

The elements in the middle layer in the Ecosystem Scan will likely sit in the middle part of the value chain:
their contribution to the value generation is to facilitate selection the right suppliers, and reduce friction by
providing technical scaffolding of activities such as preliminary designs of the solution, or dealing with the
bureaucratic part (finance, compliance).

Please note that for the sake of simplicity, we didn’t unbundle the interactions between the aggregators
and the other roles in the value chain, given that this example is pretty educational and straightforward to
everyone, but it’s worth a reflection. There are exchanges of information, data, and documentation
between consumers and solution providers, between the latter and the solution advisors that are designing
the technical blueprint, between the financial technician and the banks or the regulatory authorities, for
instance. Also the interactions between solution advisors and the suppliers of technical solutions and
components are intense, and can be subject to a deep transformation since we suspect that a lot of
potential is hidden here and unexpressed in the arena.

As an example, the elements we could subject to further unbundling would be:

● payments and financial flows;

● business process elements: how entities interact to come to the final product/solution/service (i.e.
price setting, time scheduling, definition of the requirements and conditions, etc….);
● further elements of supply-demand connectivity beyond web search and advisors such as word of
mouth, public bids, standards and contracts, etc...

In this simpler version, when the translation process from the ecosystem Scan to the Wardley Map is
completed, you should have something similar to this canvas:
 page 58

As we were expecting, being a currently industrialized arena - with essentially commoditized suppliers
and serving mass market users needs the shape of its value chain is a “C”. In this value chain map,
prosumers (they are consumers, that then become producers after they start selling electrical power to the
grid) are rather commoditized since their special needs are almost never taken into account: every
consumer looks the same, to the providers. The solution advisor acts as a broker, and the provider hides the
manufacturers from the customer’s sight. In addition, this context is fragmented and poorly scalable, since
there’s a relevant part of the business process that is custom-built and not automatized (sits inside the
SMB provider).

Three essential Tips and Tricks:

● Start by moving the entities on top of the ecosystem Scan (i.e. from the long tail - niche layer).
They will likely be positioned partially in the upper part of the map (likely, the consumers).
● In some cases, the existing mediators tend to mask and hide producers: elements that you may
have mapped on the top of the ecosystem scan, could be better positioned in the lower right part
of the Wardley Map (this applies in particular to the producers that are effectively perceived as
commodities).
● Expect a c-shaped value chain if you’re analysing an industrial, pipelined arena.
 page 59

What do you have at the end? How’s this connected with the rest?
You’ll have a clear understanding of how the value This is the end of the exploration process and
chain looks like in the given context, and you can represents the starting point for the strategic
start spotting opportunities to leverage the hidden envisioning of platform opportunities, according to
potential with your platform strategy the Platform Plays we’re going to apply in the next
step.

Additional reads, from our blog:

Our Unified Theory of Digital Markets

A comprehensive guide explaining everything about Platforms and value chain analysis

Read it here: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/digital-markets/home

 page 60

5. Applying the Six Platform Plays

In this step we’re going to explain how to use Platform Plays to visually understand common patterns in the
way platform-marketplaces transform existing value chains. Understanding the Platform Plays will help you
envision how the existing value chain can be transformed by aggregation, giving you elements of strategic
envisioning of what potential can be unleashed and leveraged in the arena. For an introduction to the
Platform Plays see section “The Six recurring Platform Plays and the C-Z transition.”

Practical Steps Guidelines:

● Apply one Platform Play at a time and move/rearrange the elements on the Wardley Map Canvas
according to the impact the Play has. Typically, all the Platform Plays are applicable, but
depending on the market/platform type you’re designing (i.e. horizontal-vertical,
managed-unmanaged), some have a less relevant impact (see additional reads).
● Take note of what you can envision in terms of transaction standardization and key business
process elements. These pieces of information will be useful in the design process, as an input for
the Transaction Engine design, as the opportunities you’re seeing here will go towards
transaction costs reduction.

Suggestions:
In this step, we are laying the foundations for strategic thinking about what impact the platform strategy
can have in the selected arena. We’ve mapped a value chain as is in the given context and we are always
on the lookout for existing frictions, weaknesses, barriers and hidden potential as they are our best
opportunities to thrive with the platform we will design.

Note that, after the application of the Platform Plays, we may end up with a complex value chain that
might - at the end of the day - be more easily understood as a combination or overlap of different “sub”
value chains. Later in the guide we will introduce ways to “separate” these value chains to look more
specifically into the single - albeit often interdependent - opportunities for platformization.

Let’s now look into the steps through the lens of the example:

Applying PP1 and First of all, we focus on the key question: what entities should I bring to the
PP2: moving users top-left part of the transformed value chain? I.e. Who are the entities/roles that
can really benefit from a direct relationship in the search for personalisation and
on top of the value
niche experiences?
chain and enabling
niche markets On the consumers side, one needs to check that consumers are not looking to
consuming commodities, since in that case they will ignore the added value
deriving from the personalisation potential;

When we move the producers of value (i.e. providers) that are capable of and
willing to provide highly personalised and customizable services and products on
the top left we need to check that those providers are effectively looking into
specialization and niche differentiation. Bringing the producers on top of the
value chain is especially preferable if potential intermediaries are not adding
value but using position as a way to extract rent.

In some cases intermediaries may be key to the production of value: in that case
the platform strategy would rather provide them a user role instead of aiming at
 page 61

their disintermediation. As we anticipated before, the example context is

mapped as currently modeled on a substantially pipeline-industrial model. In this
value chain map, the prosumers (they are consumers, who then become
producers after they start selling electrical power to the grid) are in a rather
commoditized space since their special needs are rarely taken into account. The
solution advisors aim at delivering substantially standardized packages -
especially in the case this role is played by banks, or utility providers.

The solution advisor acts as a broker, intermediating the solution provider and
the provider itself while the manufacturers are essentially perceived as a
commodity, and leveraged by providers in the installation. Solution providers are
positioned in the custom built space because they are normally SMBs that run
on their specific know-how and business process despite some level of
standardization is increasingly being enforced by solution advisors.

The resulting context is fragmented and poorly scalable, since the greatest part
of the business process is often custom-built and not automatized.

Applying PP1 and PP2 to this value chain would then mean bringing on more
personalization to the prosumer (consumer) and moving advisors on top of the
value chain. Such a transformation would lead to direct relationships and
possibly unlock niches such as geographic ones (a mountain installation may
differ from a flatland one), type of building (commercial vs residential, etc…) and
more.

Applying PP3 and When thinking about the application of PP3 and PP4 we have to factor in the
PP4: standardizing type of processes that we’re capturing in the value chain analysis. Standardizing
transactions would likely impact the most recurrent transactions that we see
the transactions
happening: mainly the purchasing (including the financial dependencies) and the
and powering integration of the newly built solar capacity into the grid.

When thinking about the application of PP4 - the creation of a SaaS (or more
 page 62

producers with generally the creation of a set of services) to support the standardization and
SaaS defragmentation of the business processes involved, we could assume for
example that the most complex of the processes involved - the assessment of the
prosumer’s need and the envisioning of the solution could be the core of the
SaaS offering. For instance, curated lists of pre-assessed, pre-optimized
manufacturer’s solutions may help both sides quickly to conceive the right offer,
effectively streamlining the bureaucratic approval. It may be worth stressing
once again one key point on SaaS: when we talk about SaaS we should extend the
scope of services more broadly and not necessarily focus on the SaaS pattern
only. As an example, an intelligent service that would automatically deliver the
bill of materials to the installation site would be an extremely powerful
extension of such a SaaS.

Identity, Applying PP5 and PP6 is essentially about transcending the traditional
Reputation and distribution processes and moving to marketplace mediated supply-demand
coordination: contextually, creating the trust related elements, namely a verified
connection of
identity and a reputation system, is needed to let the parties involved engage in
supply and demand the marketplace interaction without friction.
PP5 and PP6
In this example we foresee the marketplace replacing the role of the
advisor-as-an-intermediator and providing instead the advisor with one role in
the marketplace, inherently implying that the advisor role evolution powered by
this platform strategy would bring more niche advisors to the market
(consistently with PP2 and with a tendency that we are assuming that the
designer would have captured through the weak market signals).

The related reputation engine would be needed to:

- help the best solution advisors and providers emerge from the crowd,
guaranteeing at the same time an overall flawless quality of the
installations (reputation);
- ensure that the needed qualifications (regulatory compliance or licenses
 page 63

to operate - being this a B2C platform) are owned by the providers

through a background check phase at onboarding phase.

As a result of the application of those strategic shifts towards platformization, we can portrait the
resulting Z-shaped value chain.

The first thing we denote is that the solution advisor's role emerges by acquiring more importance, and
visibility. The premise here is that the solution advisor’s role - the role of those who have key niche
expertise to guide the consumer through the best solution for her case - evolves towards better niche
fitness: besides the usual suspects (such as banks and utilities) the assumption is that independent
professionals, who already operate in this market “in the shadow” of advisors who also own broad
acquisition channels (such as banks and utilities do), can gain a broader visibility and - if supported - grow
competitive offering in specific niches.

In this process the transaction towards a marketplace-based process of connecting supply and demand is of
course essential.
 page 64

The three key roles — consumer, solution advisor, and solution provider — that as a result of the application
of the platform plays will interact on the basis of highly personalized solutions, will therefore be the key
platform entities to consider in the design process: they will fit into our ecosystem canvas at the start of the
strategy design phase.

Besides the already shared insights, a

further consideration is that the
integration between the technical
solution and its enablers - the
bureaucracy needed to comply with
regulations from institutions and the
necessary work needed to get potential
funding should be streamlined in the
process of standardizing transactions: a
native integration to financial features
for example may be seen as essential to a
standardized transaction experience, by
reducing friction34.

Let’s therefore recap some considerations to help you read the results of the applications of the Platform

34
As a reference, the reader should look into NFx’s recipe to embed financial services in markeplaces
https://www.nfx.com/post/fintech-enabled-marketplaces/
 page 65

Plays to the existing Value chain:

● transactions (or more properly experiences integrating several transactions) that are standardized
are the most recurring ones between the entities that we find at the top left side (those that will be
interconnected through the marketplace);
● the Software as a Service or the standardised and self-accessible business process proposition is
normally targeted at the producers (in this case the solution advisors and solution providers) in the
relationship you choose internally to the arena as the core of the platformization space;
● the trust/reputation layer covers all the entities in the arena though is normally centered around
how a single relationship between supply and demand is transformed through an experience
(operational reputation is provided by one side to the other in the interaction)

Three essential Tips and Tricks:

● Focus on connecting entities to enable direct niche interactions: your platform strategy will
enable them by supporting the formation of solutions in the long tail;
● try to identify what parts of the business processes may be incorporated in the SaaS offering and
what transactions should be streamlined and standardized by analysing the impacts of PP3 and
PP4;
● when considering standardization of transactions, always look into how transacting relates with
the commodities part in the picture (eg: finance and bureaucracy in the example);
● always analyse how PP5&PP6 provide fundamental strategic advice on how the problems of trust
and quality should be managed by the platform and what types of identity (eg: with background
checks, especially in B2B marketplaces) and reputation you'll need to have in place.

What do you have at the end? How’s this connected with the rest?
You will have clarity on how the value chain in the A value chain is still made up of different segments
given arena/Platformization space will look like and it can be composed by multiple 2-sided
thanks to the intervention of a platform strategy, relationships among the different roles. The
and you have also much more awareness on what elements collected here are providing a great basis
the opportunities in the arena are. for the selection of the Platformization space that
we will see in the next and final step.

Additional reads, from our blog:

“The Evolving Future of the Platform Economy”

This post gives you many insights on marketplace dynamics under the lens of the Value Chain
analysis, and it’s relevant to have a knowledge base of how Platforms impact arenas by reshaping the
value chain(s). It’s effectively an extract and preparatory research update for our later released new
Whitepaper “New Foundations of Platform-Ecosystem thinking”.

Read the blog here:

https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/revising-the-future-of-the-platform-economy-bb2710e1346e

Check out the whole Whitepaper here:

 page 66

https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/new-foundations-of-platforms-ecosystems-thinking/

6. Identifying value chains and the platformization space and

prepare for the platform design process
In this final section we will explore some of the challenges that appear when concluding the Platform
Opportunity Exploration process. If we step back, we have (from the broadest perspective):
1. studied an entire ecosystem thanks to the Ecosystem Scan and decomposed it into its arenas;
2. once selecting a certain subset of the ecosystem (the arena) according to strategic considerations
(such as leveragability of assets, existence of moats, Total Addressable Market and more) we
reiterated the scanning in more depth - if needed;
3. We've then drawn the original value chain, envisioning how a recurrent set of platform plays would
be able to transform it into the target platform value chain.

At times, after the application of the platform plays, we can end up with an arena that is still too broad to be
enabled as a whole platformization space by a platform strategy. A good platformization space is indeed
composed of multiple multi-sided relationships that are homogenous among them: meaning that they share
a main value chain and can be addressed step-by-step by creating dedicated experiences (see the User
Guide). Further sub-systems of relationship could be related but not homogeneous, e.g.: they could share
only part of the value chain. As an example, one could think about the arena(s) around Airbnb: the same
arena - related to travelers trying to enjoy the best of a short-term trip - might easily be seen as containing
a certain value chain and system of relationships around short term rentals and another value chain and
system of relationships around booking experiences. In that case, the two platformization spaces also share
a subset of the entities - the consumer in this case.

In some cases, indeed, the Wardley Map will help us sketch a particular situation where we can identify two
or more parallel platformization spaces that might be in relationship but afford themselves to be addressed
one by one . If we see the opportunity, instead of working through the strategic design process holding such
 page 67

complexity all at once, we should try to split them and focus on the one that seems the most promising
(again, potentially basing this decision on some objective element like having an asset in that space).

As an example one could think of a certain arena pointing out two platformization spaces as a consumer
focused one, and a professionals focused one; an hardware platformization space powering a software one
on top, a services marketplace space resting on top of a software platformization space, and so on.

Case 1: two platformization spaces that share the same lower part of Case 2: two platformization spaces that are essentially on top of each
the value chain but could differ in terms of core set of entities (e.g. other (e.g.: a platformization space to standardize hardware on top of
Airbnb’s rentals and experience platformization spaces) which a marketplaces of software powered services rests)

Practical Steps Guidelines:

● After the value chain transformation, extract the most relevant information that is emerging: key
entities, business process to be transformed in a service offering (SaaS), transactions to be
standardized and reduced in their transaction costs, and the entities that are looking for the
personalization of solutions;
● Analyse the dependencies and segmentation of the value chain;
● Note down all the elements that will be useful in the design process afterwards (what
transactions are the most relevant, how to standardize them, what processes can be
automatized, who is looking for self-organization, and so on).

Three essential Tips and Tricks:

● The transformation of an arena can give space to multiple Value Chains.
● Each value chain normally provides opportunity for at least one “platformization space”: the
possibility to defragment and scale up a certain system of relationships. In some cases the
transformed value chain can provide two or more sub-value chains / platformization spaces (eg:
hardware / software, software / services…)
● When approaching the platform design phase in the identified platformization space, always
focus your efforts towards a core two-sided relationship (that can have an ancillary role for other
entities) so that you can clearly identify supply and demand (see User Guide, “4 Choosing the Core
Relationships you want to Focus on”). In the current example, focusing on the relationship between
the prosumer and the solution provider will help you design the scalable experience (for the
 page 68

provider) of receiving a stream of installation requests. In this experience the solution advisor has
an ancillary (but key) role as it owns the initial relationship with the prosumer (the “customer”)
making the case for a further iteration of designing the interactive experience that allows an
advisor to provide the prosumer with the right advice. In this case the platformization space
effectively integrates the three roles and requires the designer to focus at least on these two
relationships to get the system started.

What do you have at the end? How’s this connected with the rest?
At the end of this process, you have fully explored The value chain segment you’ve selected, and/or
the ecosystem, maturing a deep awareness of the the key two sided relationship will be the starting
arenas and of the value chain(s) in them. The value point for the Platform Design process, where you
chain segment (and platformization space) selected will design the Transaction and the Learning
after the exploration is the one that maximizes the Engines, and elaborate one or multiple Platform
probability of success for your platform strategy. Experiences for the entities that belong to the key
Also, you’ve extracted the main entities/roles in the relationship, thus executing your platform
arena, that will be initially mapped at the Platform business model and start leveraging the potential
Design process. The application of the platform hidden in that arena with your platform strategy.
plays will also provide a lot of insights of what the
ecosystem should expect, in terms of enabling and
empowering services and channel optimization.
 page 69

CLOSING NOTES
What’s next? With the framework presented in this guide, you’ve managed to investigate the broad
ecosystem of your interest, in order to identify some valuable elements:

1. you’ve identified the key players, their relationships, and the capacity/expectation in terms of value;
2. you’ve envisioned the changes in the value chain segment (the platformization space) that a
successful platform strategy should execute, coming from the application of the platform plays
(what transactions need to be standardized, what part of the business process can be offered
through a SaaS, etc.);
3. you’ve mapped the assets you have in the given platformization space;
4. you’ve clarity on how the arenas are connected and interdependent from each other.

This information is a good starting point to start designing your platform strategy, ending up with the
experiences you want to bring to your ecosystem. The Platform Design Toolkit User Guide and the related
set of canvases that you can download from www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/toolkit will help you to:
- define roles for the key players identified in the exploration process
- identify the core entities and the key 2-sided relationships to design experiences for;
- design the two key engines of the platform strategy: the Transactions Engine, aiming at reducing the
transaction costs and enabling smaller and smaller players to start interacting in the ecosystem, and
the Learning Engine providing enabling and empowering services helping entities to become the
best version of themselves, thanks to the platform itself;
- consolidate all these elements into Platform Experiences and define their business model;
- prepare for validation.

The Platform Design Toolkit User Guide and the related canvases can be downloaded from
www.platformdesigntoolkit.com
 page 70

Training Opportunities
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https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/platform-design-training-programs/

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