The emergence of platforms poses a number of important and difficult strategic questions for business leaders and managers. For example, platforms haven’t yet emerged in every industry. How can business leaders anticipate whether their industry could be subject to platform dynamics? Under which conditions would the emergence of platforms be a threat to existing firms? How can business leaders and managers anticipate and prepare themselves to take advantage of the opportunities created by platforms?
Formulating platform strategies requires firms to explore, concretely, whether and how they can transform their product, technology, or service, into a platform. Through in-depth consulting engagements in a variety of industries with firms such as Nokia (mobile telecom and Internet), SAP (software), Symbian (mobile telecom software), British Telecom, Ingenico (securitized payment), FinMeccanica (defence), Laing O’Rourke (construction) and others, Dr. Gawer has developed unique and practical insights on the formulation and implementation of platform leadership strategies.
Consulting Engagements
Dr. Gawer activities in research, teaching, and consulting, continuously feed each other to facilitate the development of ideas, test their applicability and their limits, and push the frontier of knowledge in this area.
Following requests, Dr. Gawer carefully chooses to engage in a small number of consulting projects, and sees them as highly-customized partnerships. Dr. Gawer’s consulting experience with senior managers logically tends to bear on her deep expertise on formulating, evaluating, and implementing platform strategies. These are two-way conversations where she can not only share and educate managers and business leaders with insights from her recent research, but also learns from the managers she consults with.