The Duality Element and Why The Best Digital Products and Also Platforms

Construction workers build platforms. Those platforms can serve bricklayers, carpenters, painters and anyone working in the project. In internet business,  great companies engineer products with duality: products which are also platforms. Facebook is a product and also a platform.

In this piece, I explain why you must desire to create a platform and not just a product. Just like construction platforms, platforms enable you to rewire your business logic with ease. Products are hard-wired and fixed. Platforms create digital customers while products make consumers; customers are better. Out of customers, you have fans!

The best modern technology businesses are platform-anchored, not product-driven. Facebook is a platform. Apple has a platform. Google runs as a platform. These are among the most valuable companies on earth. As marginal cost goes lower in the internet age, platforms will rise because of the positive continuum of network effects. From aggregation construct to one oasis strategy, businesses with consumer focused frameworks are wired to succeed if they are platform-oriented.

In this piece, I explain the key components of the duality element.

Product applications are wired with predefined logic which means they do only what you want them to do and nothing more. Myspace built a social connection app and nothing more. But in platforms, you do not have “hard-wired” logic states making it easier to reconfigure the ecosystems for different uses. Here, Facebook engineered a platform which makes it possible that it can do whatever comes in future. Once that happens, you see amazing scalability driven by network effects: a virtuoso circle where as more people use a digital product, the product gets more data which is used to improve the customer experience, and that improved quality attracts more users.

Any digital product that does not have the duality element will struggle especially in consumer market: you need the product and the platform as one to make progress these days. You need to build platforms because they have the elasticity to evolve with your business logic. Products are static and fade quickly as markets change. Platforms can grow without bounds, anchoring new opportunities on top. The business logic of integration, process and decision making are best handled on platforms over products in the internet space. With platforms, you have CUSTOMERS; products deliver consumers.

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