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Building a Platform Business Requires Balance—Lessons from Salesforce

Running a platform business requires building an ecosystem of various constituents with differing interests. In the audio edition of the June 2024 briefing, learn how Salesforce approached this.
Abstract

Platform business models have become highly popular; they are used by half of the world’s ten largest companies by market capitalization. The challenge for established companies is that running a platform business is different from running a product business. A platform business requires building an ecosystem of various constituents with differing interests: customers, the company’s internal product teams, and partners. Based on an in-depth case study of Salesforce Platform, this briefing illustrates one approach to balancing the interests of these constituents.

The June 2024 research briefing is read by author Martin Mocker.

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT

Follow the research briefing podcast series on SoundCloud.

© 2024 MIT Center for Information Systems Research, Mocker and Sebastian. MIT CISR Research Briefings are published monthly to update the center’s member organizations on current research projects.

About the Researchers

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Martin Mocker, Professor, ESB Business School, Reutlingen University and Academic Research Fellow, MIT CISR

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