Introduction

 

In our work with teams designing platform/marketplace products, we’ve often dealt with a complex set of challenges that can make the experience of developing a platform-marketplace strategy a discouraging challenge.

On the other hand, in 10 years of work at Boundaryless we’ve developed so many aids and tools to help teams to streamline their work. More in detail, Boundaryless has released over the years three major guides that one can easily find linked on this Toolkits page (along with the 3EO guide for ecosystemic organizational development). This whole page also offers a good recap of the Platform Design Toolkit-related materials: PDT Platform Design Toolkit.

 

Besides that, last year we also released four fundamental pieces that recap all our platform/marketplace design techniques – along with four “Macro-Problems”. All the article include further links to other reads and that also help you locate important materials on the guides listed above, and point out what canvases can help you along the way:

 

• Understanding Ecosystems to create the right Value Propositions: 
• Defining the Platform Experience, and Flywheels for Defensibility
• Defining the Go-To-Market and Liquidity approach 
• Achieving and measuring growth (plus a piece containing a good growth model template)

 

It’s important to understand that canvases and toolkits mainly exist to help teams achieve a level of alignment that would otherwise be hard to achieve. As a product leader or entrepreneur your responsibility will always be to create a team (and later an organization) that is aligned visually and strategically around your most pressing challenges. The Platform Design Toolkit allows you to do just that.

 

 

 

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The Platform Portfolio Deep Dive is a 1-Day Experience designed for executives and builders who want to learn how to manage an ecosystem of several products and services. Join us in Barcelona for the first Live Edition.

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The poster

 

As a way to help teams navigate through the complexities of developing a platform-marketplace strategy and locate the right reads and tools we’ve created a poster. The poster is structured around what we call the “macro-problems” listed above and, for each of them, gives a recap of:

 

• the description of the typical scenario you’ll find yourself and your team navigating through
• some key mental models you’ve to embrace in that scenario
• typical points of attention (to avoid mistakes)
• key questions you have to answer in such a phase / with such a macro-problem focus
• the key techniques related to such macro problem
• and the reference read where you can find guidance.

 

Download the poster in high quality here: https://blss.io/PDT-POSTER

 

Remember that all Boundaryless tools are also available as collaborative templates on Mural.