Chapitre 1 : Internet : où en sommes-nous maintenant ?

Le livre commence par une histoire de haut niveau d'Internet. En 1993, le premier navigateur Web est sorti. Initialement connu sous le nom de Mosaic, il a été renommé Netscape. Internet a gagné en popularité au fur et à mesure que les gens ont commencé à s'envoyer des e-mails, à naviguer sur le net et à créer leurs propres pages.

De nombreuses entreprises ont vu le jour pour profiter de la nouvelle technologie. À la fin des années 90, un large éventail de biens et de services était proposé à la vente. Google est venu et a amélioré l'ensemble de l'expérience en permettant aux gens de trouver beaucoup plus facilement ce qu'ils cherchaient.

There were plenty of failures among these early companies. This isn’t uncommon with new technologies. Everyone jumps on the new bandwagon but not everyone completely understands the new dynamic.

The new millennium heralded the rise of a new type of web service. This is Web 2.0. It’s all about users; an important facet of Web 2.0 is the rise of social media websites. Instead of being the occasional source of entertainment or a place to check email, the internet has become integrated with people’s lives. People’s personal finance and social interactions, to name but two domains, have been transformed. Instead of using the internet occasionally, people essentially live their lives online. Our world has been transformed by the ability to communicate quickly to the entire world. Citizen journalists have been able to bring global awareness to a host of social and political issues. People can work together on projects regardless of where they might live.

The location for interacting with technology has shifted. Back in the day, folks mostly used sophisticated technology when they were at work. That’s all changed. Nowadays people are as likely to turn on a computer and hop on the internet at home as at work. In fact, the line between home and work is increasingly blurred as more people work from home. This has brought about the rise of the prosumer. Prosumers are platform users, actors who are both producers and consumers.

A freemium is something that’s given away for free in the hopes of creating a customer. Typically, a site will provide basic services for free and require some form of paid subscription for access to enhanced features. It’s a risky strategy. Companies might waste too many resources on free users who will never convert to subscribers.

La révolution des technologies de l'information a son lot d'externalités négatives. Les industries ont été perturbées et de nombreuses entreprises ont été contraintes de fermer leurs portes. Les entreprises américaines ne bénéficient plus d'avantages locaux et doivent désormais rivaliser avec des entreprises d'autres pays qui pourraient avoir une main-d'œuvre moins chère ou moins réglementée. Aucune entreprise n'est à l'abri de ces forces changeantes du marché. La technologie a abaissé les barrières à l'entrée, rendant le démarrage de nouvelles entreprises plus facile et moins coûteux, ce qui signifie que de nombreuses entreprises sont désormais en concurrence les unes avec les autres dans le monde entier. Cela peut être formidable pour les nouvelles startups en Zambie, mais cela signifie également l'érosion des entreprises traditionnelles. Tout est en cours de réalignement, ce qui est bon pour certains, mais mauvais pour d'autres.

The world is changing so fast that “planning” is no longer an effective strategy. By the time a plan comes to fruition, circumstances have likely changed so much as to make the plan obsolete. Nowadays all businesses operate under a huge cloud of uncertainty. And so, my friends, this is the world we live in. Privacy and security are big concerns, at least as long as such concepts continue to exist. We are always connected to the technology grid. Our lives and our businesses have changed dramatically in the space of a decade.

Chapitre 2 : Plateformes : définitions, histoire et économie

The internet changed everything. We work online. We socialize online. We take care of errands; we entertain ourselves online. It’s not at all unusual for people to spend most of their time on the internet. It’s important that we have stability and security in all of these activities. Platforms can help us achieve this stability and security.

Une plate-forme est un écosystème qui évolue facilement et englobe des fonctionnalités, des utilisateurs et des partenaires. Les plateformes permettent aux gens de se contacter et d'échanger des informations. Ils facilitent grandement la collaboration avec des tiers. La plateforme est un modèle économique. Même les grandes entreprises peuvent être des plateformes. Dans un cercle bienfaisant (par opposition au cercle vicieux), les plateformes génèrent des effets de réseau qui rendent les plateformes plus populaires, qui génèrent plus d'effets de réseau. Les plateformes sont construites au coup par coup. Chaque composant d'une plate-forme s'appelle une planche. Les plates-formes existent depuis toujours, mais les ordinateurs leur donnent un nouveau pouvoir. Maintenant, ils sont suralimentés.

Monopolies don’t socially optimize resources. Monopolies create barriers to entry, effectively preventing meaningful competition. There’s the controversial notion of natural monopolies, when barriers to entry are so high that really only one company can succeed. AT&T is an example; back in the day they were pretty much the only phone company. They had a complete monopoly. Some people say this is just a natural result of market circumstances, so it’s cool. Others say the whole idea is in error.

Monopolies are the result of horizontal or vertical integration. Some of them have control of the production process, which is vertical integration. Some have control of the market, which is horizontal integration. All this talk of integration makes some people think that platforms are monopolies, but they are wrong. Platforms aren’t monopolies. There are many differences between platforms and monopolies.

Technology and globalization have evened the playing field, so companies can’t make “super-normal” profits because there’s so much competitive pressure. People will just go somewhere else if you charge too much.

Les plates-formes ont de faibles barrières à l'entrée. N'importe qui peut créer un nouveau site Web et devenir un candidat. La concurrence potentielle est toujours au coin de la rue.

In the new paradigm, demand is more elastic. For example, we need electricity, and there’s not really any way around that. On the other hand, we don’t need Netflix. The difference between these two needs is the elasticity of demand. Platforms don’t put a chokehold on our needs the way monopolies tend to do.

People don’t hate platform companies the way they tend to hate traditional corporations. Yes, companies like Google and Amazon certainly have their detractors. There is plenty of irrational jealousy directed at figures such as Mark Zuckerberg, but he isn’t hated nearly as much as someone like John D. Rockefeller was. Platforms don’t have the kind of power in people’s lives the way that monopolies are disposed to have, so they don’t generate the same level of hatred.

Les entreprises de plate-forme ont tendance à pratiquer une discrimination par les prix, c'est-à-dire que les différentes parties paient des frais différents. Pour cette raison, et pour toutes les raisons énumérées ci-dessus, les entreprises de plateformes informatiques sont différentes des monopoles.

Chapitre 3 : Plus qu'une simple librairie

In this chapter, we explore the history of amazon.com. In many respects, Amazon makes a good model for how to do things right. Amazon was predicted to fail in 2001. In response, founder Jeff Bezos decided to grow the company as fast as possible. By 2002, it was the first retailer to make a profit on internet commerce. Today it’s a big success.

It’s helpful to have First Mover Advantage (FMA). Being the first company to make a significant move in a market puts a company at a distinct advantage. You don’t necessarily have to be first, but early is good. An example of this is how Amazon beat the competition to simplify the process of making a purchase. At one time, it took 12 clicks to buy something on EBay. In 1997, Amazon introduced 1-Click transactions. They managed to reduce a lot of transaction friction and people gravitated to the site.

Customer experience is important. Amazon puts lots of effort into providing good customer service. The importance of customer experience is magnified due to the potency of network effects. Amazon asks for permission when it uses people’s info. This is a good thing to do. They also let people opt out of their emails. Users are encouraged to feel that their concerns matter to the company.

There are two levels of platform technology. The transaction is on the first level. The second level is how the platform makes suggestions and recommendations to users. Powerful business intelligence software allows the site to make relevant suggestions to users without the clutter of ads the users might not appreciate. Users can rate the products they purchase. In fact, they can even rate products that they didn’t purchase on the platform. The rating system takes advantage of network effects and allows the site to be even more accurate in the products it recommends to individual customers.

Amazon n'a pas peur de prendre des risques et d'essayer de nouvelles choses. Parfois, se lancer dans d'autres activités se produit par accident, comme cela a été le cas avec le cloud computing. Il existe toutes sortes de ramifications Amazon car elles profitent de ce genre de création fortuite.

Make no mistake, Amazon does have its fair share of errors and problems. With Kindle, they thought they could rewrite the publishing industry. They were wrong. Publishers are distrustful of the pricing scheme Amazon has for eBooks. There have been controversies over the products that Amazon does and does not sell. For example, attempting to block pornography from the site has resulted in books getting blocked that are legitimate gay and lesbian literature. It isn’t a simple thing to define some categories; what is considered pornography by some is regarded as erotica and sex positive material by others.

Amazon continuera à faire face à la concurrence. Les défis de la législation se profilent à l'horizon ; il y a une forte tendance à forcer les détaillants en ligne à facturer la taxe de vente. Il y a de nombreux essais à venir pour Amazon. Malgré cela, Amazon est bien placé pour continuer à croître et à évoluer dans le futur.

Chapitre 4 : Au-delà de l'ordinateur

Maintenant, jetez un œil à Apple. Il était une fois en 1977, trois gars, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak et Ronald Wayne. Ils ont lancé une petite entreprise appelée Apple Computer. Célèbre, Jobs a été contraint de démissionner en 1985, pour revenir dans l'entreprise en 1997.

In the mid-1980s, the company started developing other devices in addition to computers. They designed cameras, CD players, speakers and many other high tech gadgets. By the aughts, it was clear that the company was much more than a computer manufacturer. Apple Computer legally changed their name, dropping the word “computer” and simply calling the company Apple. They successfully branched out into many different products beyond computers. They also made big piles of money selling content.

Good design is part of the brand; Apple products look good and they don’t have extraneous bells and whistles. They are intuitive and straightforward. Simplicity, ease of use and enjoyment are the qualities that made Apple products great. These are also the qualities that make for great platforms. Products like the iPhone allowed partners to create apps, and so Apple became a platform company.

They continued to innovate. An important issue was how to maintain simplicity even though people have a bunch of different devices. Apple’s solution to this problem is to use cloud computing. The iPhone was a breakthrough. The App Store has made a lot of money for Apple.

Apple est heureux de s'associer avec des petits gars comme des programmeurs, mais pas tellement avec les gros rouleaux. Ces décisions sont prises de manière stratégique pour aider à favoriser une communauté d'utilisateurs mais éviter de donner de l'air aux concurrents. Ils ont ouvert l'interface de programmation d'applications (API), et maintenant l'App Store leur permet de se développer encore plus sans avoir à payer pour des développeurs, des programmeurs, des services ou toute autre personne pour ces applications. Les API ouvertes ont accéléré l'innovation. Comme d'autres grandes sociétés de plates-formes, Apple a compris comment monétiser son écosystème en vendant du matériel et des logiciels.

Apple has exerted control in some cases that has made some of its partners unhappy. Porn apps were prohibited from the App Store. They also had to get pretty firm about the quality of apps that they’ll sell at the store. For the most part, however, they do what they can to keep the developers happy. They understand how important those developers are. They found a variety of external partners to work with. iTunes became successful because of its partnerships with big recording and publishing firms.

Apple has its critics. Some musicians don’t like iTunes because of its impact on that industry. Some people don’t like Apple’s fat margins. Apple offers a premium product, however, and so it’s entitled to charge premium prices. The criticisms are quickly dispatched with, perhaps too quickly. In the future, Apple will probably become a bigger target for hackers. But they will find a way through any problems.

Apple has been remarkably successful because it’s innovative and different. Its executives are wooed by other big tech firms. Everyone wants what they’ve got. They keep on being successful year after year, decade after decade.

Jobs est mort juste au moment où Simon terminait le livre. La discussion de sa mort est ajoutée un peu maladroitement à la fin du chapitre.

Chapitre 5 : Le roi du social

Next, we turn to Facebook. Facebook rose fast. Founder Mark Zuckerberg is a platform genius. He knew right from the beginning that he wanted the site to be a platform, back when no one was thinking like that. It was founded in 2004 by Zuckerberg and two chaps who are probably still hitting themselves because they didn’t stick around for long (Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.)

Back in the day, Friendster was the big social networking site. It was enormously popular. In fact, it was too popular. There weren’t enough servers for all the people who wanted to be on it. Pages loaded slowly, and the user experience suffered. It was clear that there was a strong demand for this sort of site, but only if it functioned well.

Zuckerberg learned from Friendster’s mistakes. He made performance a priority. He was cautious about building the platform, because he wanted to be able to scale it up with minimum problems. He added planks one by one. Expansion was gradual.

L'une des raisons de sa popularité est que Facebook est gratuit pour les utilisateurs. L'espace publicitaire est vendu afin de gagner de l'argent pour la plate-forme.

A big problem with early social networking sites like Friendster and Myspace was in allowing people to pretend to be whoever they wanted. They were wide open to frauds, spammers and all types of unsavory characters. Zuckerberg learned from this. Authenticity is important to building community. For this reason, people have to use their real names on Facebook. Certainly, the safeguards that are in place don’t make it impossible for someone to create a false identity on Facebook, but most people on the site are who they say they are.

The Facebook platform has a number of planks, such as ads, games, Facebook credits (the platform’s universal currency), the Like button, fan pages, tags and the news feed. But wait, there’s more! Other planks include events, email, instant messaging, groups and notes. And the hits just keep on coming. No doubt Zuckerberg will continue planking up his platform long into the future.

The platform does have its share of problems. Chief among them is the issue of censorship. Facebook has been inconsistent with what’s allowed to be posted. The site has received negative publicity for censoring famous people. Another big problem is privacy. Historically the platform has been laissez faire about dealing with this. It is also stingy with its API, reducing the potential for a community of developers to coalesce around the platform. Additionally, the platform is constantly changing. Sometimes people don’t like the changes and they go on Facebook to complain about it to their friends. This is so ironic.

L'avenir est radieux pour Facebook. Une grande question est de savoir si la société deviendra publique. La SEC pourrait forcer la question. Cela pourrait être problématique. Parfois, des employés talentueux quittent les entreprises lorsqu'elles entrent en bourse parce qu'ils reçoivent des actions et deviennent instantanément riches.

A probable future development will see Facebook grow on mobile platforms. FB seems like they’ve learned from their mistakes and they’re likely going to be successful long into the future.

Chapitre 6 : De la recherche à l'ubiquité

Sergey Brin and Larry Page incorporated Google in 1998. It didn’t take them long to realize that their search engine was limited. Even if they could search and index the web with breathtaking speed and efficiency, people would use the site more if it did more than simply search.

Google a ajouté de nombreuses fonctionnalités au-delà de la simple recherche de mots clés, se développant parfois si rapidement que ses objectifs défiaient la logique ou la planification. Par exemple, ils ont scanné le contenu des bibliothèques sans obtenir l'autorisation de droit d'auteur des éditeurs.

Google a beaucoup, beaucoup de planches. Cela maintient les utilisateurs sur sa plate-forme. Cela inclut des planches telles que des mobiles, des cartes et bien plus encore. Ils continuent d'ajouter plus de produits. Comme Amazon, Apple et Facebook, Google s'est développé en se déplaçant latéralement. Ils ont également monétisé la plateforme avec des publicités ; en outre, ils ont augmenté leurs revenus en faisant payer pour amener les entreprises sur les recherches des utilisateurs.

La politique de l'entreprise encourage l'innovation chez les employés. Une partie de la façon dont Google maintient un avantage est en exigeant que les ingénieurs passent vingt pour cent de leur temps à travailler sur les produits qu'ils aiment. Ils ont institutionnalisé l'innovation.

Google essaie de garder les utilisateurs sur sa plate-forme en proposant de nombreux services différents. Les services intégrés sont très pratiques. Au lieu d'avoir à se connecter à de nombreux sites Web différents pour faire une variété de choses, les utilisateurs peuvent rester dans les limites d'une seule plate-forme.

Google personnalise chaque résultat de recherche pour chaque utilisateur, en utilisant toutes les informations qu'il a recueillies à leur sujet. L'algorithme de recherche adapte les résultats de manière appropriée aux utilisateurs individuels.

Google loves freemium. They charge users for very few things. This has certainly helped make them successful, but at the same time, they probably didn’t have a lot of choice. Services like search engines and email are offered for free by many different websites. With all this competition, Google probably would have failed had they tried to charge for these services.

Google a de nombreux partenaires institutionnels importants. Des sociétés de télécommunications comme Verizon et AT&T vendent des droïdes Google. Il existe également des milliers de développeurs qui créent des applications pour la plate-forme.
Google has made their share of missteps. With their fingers in so many pies, it’s inevitable that a few mistakes will be made.

There are significant problems with privacy. For example, the mapping service Street View lets people look at all sorts of public and private spaces. They tried to get into the Chinese market, but the Chinese government didn’t play nice, and Google got all sorts of criticism for saying they’d go along with Chinese censorship. The whole thing didn’t last long. Another problem Google faces is that people perceive the company as arrogant. To a certain extent, this is due to their size and accomplishments. There will always be some people who are hostile to successful enterprises.

Looking to the future, Google will need to make some changes. Right now, they earn most of their money from advertising. They need to diversify. They need to balance growth and focus. But you know, they’re a big company; they’re innovative; they’ll be fine.

Chapitre 7 : L'ADN : Composants et caractéristiques de la plate-forme

The Gang of Four consists of the currently “most important” platforms on the internet. The Gang of Four have all changed a lot in the years since they started up. Maybe not so much Facebook, but certainly the rest of them originally weren’t even platforms when they started.

They all had the ability to scale, the ability to add more features and adapt to the changes that growth brings. Scaling is easier nowadays because of cloud computing. Companies no longer need to have more tangible resources as they grow. It’s crucial, however, to have enough computing power in order to scale up.

There are many properties these four platforms have in common. They all have dynamic stability, meaning they are stable and yet always changing. They are adaptable. They’re all dependent on data and technology. They collect lots of information about people because that helps them make decisions and function better. They understand their customers. The Gang of Four have lots of partners because that grows their businesses. They take advantage of network effects. They have communities that are really engaged. They benefit from positive feels. They have virality. The Gang of Four all have products that have the quality of simplicity. Their products are easy to use and are not junked up with extras and frills.

Lots of existing companies have cultures which make it difficult for them to form partnerships. They don’t play well with others. Collaboration is one of the only ways to “grow the pie” of value. Partners are necessities.

It’s useful to borrow ideas from other platforms, especially the successful ones. Facebook pioneered the like button, and now it, or something very much like it, is ubiquitous across the internet. Everyone borrows each other’s good ideas.

Platforms should cultivate stickiness, provide lots of different features so that it’s convenient for users to stay on the site as they engage in a variety of activities. The longer people are kept on the platform, the better.

Major platforms tend to have well known “rock star” executives at the top. Think of Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Jobs. These people didn’t become household names for nothing. Platform companies have visionary leaders. They aren’t democratic. Decision making can be done quickly when leadership is strong and there are few protocols requiring them to gain consensus. Once a decision is made, these leaders can then ensure that the decision is acted on.

Generally, it isn’t easy to move from one platform to another. You can’t look up Facebook entries on Google, for example. This is by design. Platforms want to keep users in the fold as much as possible, and don’t want them bleeding off to other platforms. Even so, the Gang of Four are all frenemies. The businesses overlap in significant ways and are natural competitors with one another. Yet they do cooperate with each other when it’s logical to do so. Users on one platform can typically import contact lists and similar information across multiple platforms.

In a lot of situations, it might not be possible for platforms to avoid politics. In today’s world, politics tinge many decisions whether firms like it or not. However, controversy can help a platform. Controversy can draw people to visit and check it out.

Chapitre 8 : Donne-moi le prix ! Les avantages des plateformes

It’s scary for existing firms to consider changing to the platform model, because that model contradicts so much traditional business wisdom. Considering how much there is to gain, however, all businesses should take a good hard look at moving to a platform business model. Platforms magnify the power of brands. Platform brands can become so powerful they are verb branded, that is to say, the firm’s name describes their core activity. For example, googling. For Google, this happened because they did their job better than their competitors. The brand has become seared into public awareness.

Il existe des barrières à l'entrée, et l'avantage du premier entrant joue contre ceux qui n'entrent sur le terrain que maintenant. Tout le monde joue déjà au jeu Internet, il est donc peu probable que votre plate-forme de widgets réussisse car un autre revendeur de widgets vous a déjà battu. Ce n'est pas une raison pour éviter les plateformes, cependant. Plus tôt vous créez une plate-forme, plus vous devancez les entreprises qui viendront après vous. Et une approche innovante peut amener votre entreprise à être la première et à avoir cet avantage savoureux de premier entrant dans de nouveaux domaines qui sont presque impossibles à prévoir à l'avance.

Innovation is good. Welcome external players. Of course, it’s important to generate innovation in-house as well. Innovation sparks more innovation. As companies grow they have more resources to put toward innovation. Innovation can have positive or negative effects, it’s not just good all the time.

There are absolutely scads of good reasons to jump on the platform bandwagon. If you still aren’t convinced, the rest of this chapter will attempt to change your mind with one persuasive rationale after another.

Les plateformes peuvent vous aider à développer votre entreprise d'une manière que vous n'auriez jamais pu prévoir. Parfois, une plate-forme démarre une activité secondaire qui devient de plus en plus lucrative et importante que l'entreprise d'origine ne l'a jamais été.

Les plateformes peuvent offrir plusieurs produits et services, ce qui peut faire gagner du temps aux clients en évitant d'avoir à se rendre à différents endroits. Cela empêchera vos clients de se tourner vers vos concurrents. Vos clients seront reconnaissants d'avoir la commodité d'avoir tout au même endroit, et leur fidélité continuera de croître.

Parmi les nombreux avantages des activités de plate-forme figurent les activités d'exploration de données dans lesquelles elles s'engagent généralement. Les informations recueillies peuvent améliorer votre compréhension de vos clients. Vous pouvez faire des recommandations en fonction de leurs préférences, ce qui améliorera les ventes.

Platforms can react quicker to changing conditions than traditional firms. New products can be launched faster. They can respond with great agility to unexpected trends. In a world of continuous change, the ability to be light on one’s feet is essential.

Don’t let your company languish in the technological Stone Age. Your competition is probably already working on a platform right now.

Chapitre 9 : Frondes et flèches : les dangers des plates-formes

While platforms are a great business model now in its ascendancy, that doesn’t mean that they are free of problems. Like any field of human endeavor, there is plenty of room for shortcomings and failure. Platforms aren’t always successful, for one thing. Sometimes they never get off the ground, sometimes they crash and burn. Platforms have their limits. They can’t sell bad products any more successfully than a traditional business can.

There are plenty of bad actors on the internet stage. Many have engaged in fraud. There are ads for illegal products. These problems have stirred regulatory interest. There really aren’t the resources to go after all the bad actors, so the government goes after the worst and most high profile ones.

Dishonest behavior doesn’t stay secret long. Misbehavior, or even mild controversy, can attract tons of negative attention. Needless to say, this can be devastating for network effects. In today’s world, reputation is more important than ever. Platforms should always strive to stay on the up-and-up.

The Gang of Four are as fast as anyone to make aggressive business moves. Sometimes this makes people mad at them. The Gang of Four often succeeded through ignoring established rules, laws and conventions, at least at the beginning when they were gaining momentum. You want to try to please your customers but sometimes, especially when you make changes, you can’t make everyone happy. There is real danger of alienating your user base, a real conundrum considering the need to move quickly and embrace change.

It’s good to have external partners. They enhance the functionality of the platform and help to increase the user base. There is a danger, though, that the partners on your platform will grow to become your competition. Affiliations between partners are fluid, and you should never expect such relationships to last forever.

Platforms aren’t a perfect solution to all the world’s ills. Lots of people dislike any given platform for any number of reasons. Just because an enterprise is a platform is not a guarantee it will do well. Many platforms are unsuccessful and fail. Some examples of platform failures include Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo!, Myspace, eBay and Enron. We can learn quite a bit from studying the failures of others. Each of these failed endeavors are examined and important lessons are highlighted. Although some of these companies have survived in the long run, they all have missed important opportunities in ways that caused them significant damage. For example, Myspace was once a social media powerhouse, but it had important design problems. In an extreme example of user personalization, it lacked a coherent interface making the platform inconsistent and confusing. In addition to these problems, there wasn’t an easy way to monetize the platform. Top executives were unable to figure out how the company could make a decent profit off the site.

There are many potential headaches and pitfalls for the platform business, but this doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile to pursue the business model. The rewards outweigh the potential downsides.

Chapitre 10 : Le comment : conseils pour créer une plate-forme

Here we have a chapter loaded with good advice for designing platforms. Be forewarned, however, that there’s no magic path that will lead to a platform that will make you rich and famous. Even if you follow all of these recommendations, it’s no guarantee of success. This chapter is somewhat like if you had an uncle in in the business who is happy to share his experiences with you and give you his advice.

Restez simple et aussi minimal que possible. Évitez la bureaucratie. Agir petit. Les entreprises traditionnelles s'enlisent dans des règles et des formalités administratives qui peuvent vraiment entraver l'innovation.

Nourrissez la communauté sur votre plateforme en restant ouvert et collaboratif. Les API ouvertes sont vraiment importantes pour favoriser une communauté active.

Look for extensions — new planks — that fit with your core activity. Make intelligent acquisitions. In some situations, it can be better to buy a company that has technology that you want than to try to replicate the technology and have that company out there competing with you.

Développez beaucoup d'idées. Prenez de petits risques. Descendez ce chemin pour voir s'il mène quelque part.

Maintenez les activités principales de votre entreprise même si vous innovez également.

Understand that you’ll fail frequently. That’s OK. That’s the price of innovation. Don’t let it stop you.

Le perfectionnisme peut être un obstacle pour faire avancer les choses. Bien sûr, vous voulez fournir un produit de qualité, mais à un moment donné, vous devez le laisser partir. Se concentrer sur la perfection totale vous ralentit. Au moment où votre produit est parfait, il pourrait bien être obsolète.

Commencez avec la plus grande capacité possible. L'excès c'est bien. De cette façon, vous pouvez gérer les pics inattendus. De cette façon, vous pourrez évoluer le moment venu.

Know when it’s time to get out.

La largeur est meilleure que la profondeur. Mieux vaut faire beaucoup de choses que de se spécialiser profondément dans une chose. Une plate-forme qui a plusieurs fonctions connexes gardera les utilisateurs sur la plate-forme mieux qu'une plate-forme qui fait vraiment bien une chose.

It’s dangerous to cling to safety. Embrace risk. It’s safer.

When you see an opportunity, move quickly. Patience is good in many ways when you build a platform. However, most opportunities don’t stick around for long. The secret is in knowing the opportunities that will best serve your platform and jumping on them quickly.

Take advantage of existing planks. It’s a lot of work creating new planks from scratch. External websites, emails, blogs, applications and open source tools can all be harnessed to benefit your platform.

Encourage cross pollination. Don’t fear your competitors being on your platform. Likewise, you should try to get on theirs.

Ajoutez des planches au besoin. Recherchez les lacunes dans les services que vous fournissez et déterminez si ces lacunes peuvent être comblées grâce à des partenariats, en ajoutant des planches internes ou en achetant une entreprise qui fournit le service.

Be realistic. Don’t imagine that you’ll get rich quick or anything like that.

Chapter 11: The Candidates: Today’s Emerging Platforms

À l'avenir, le Gang of Four devra se surveiller de près et surveiller toute nouvelle compétition qui se présente. Personne ne sait ce qui va se passer ensuite. Avec le recul, certains changements peuvent sembler inévitables, mais ces changements passés étaient tout aussi difficiles à prévoir à leur époque que les changements futurs le sont aujourd'hui. Gardant cela à l'esprit, Simon se lance courageusement dans la mêlée et identifie certaines plates-formes qui, selon lui, sont prometteuses et qui pourraient dominer leurs domaines autant que le Gang of Four le fait aujourd'hui.

Une plate-forme prometteuse est Foursquare. Cette plate-forme permet aux utilisateurs d'utiliser des appareils mobiles pour s'enregistrer dans des lieux publics. Les gens peuvent marquer des lieux et partager des informations avec d'autres. Cette plate-forme fait les choses correctement en permettant l'intégration avec des sites de médias sociaux existants comme Facebook et en gardant leur API ouverte aux développeurs.

Twitter existe depuis un certain temps. Ils ont eu quelques problèmes de mise à l'échelle lorsqu'ils sont devenus populaires. Ils sont passés à une nouvelle technologie qui pourrait gérer la croissance. Ils ont donné suite à cette décision rapidement. Comme il est dit ci-dessus, au chapitre dix, les opportunités doivent être saisies avec toute la rapidité requise.

WordPress est un système de gestion de contenu qui fournit une plate-forme aux utilisateurs pour créer leurs propres blogs et sites Web. Il a une API ouverte et les développeurs se sont vraiment tournés vers les extensions et les plugins de construction de villes pour la plate-forme.

Offrant des offres exceptionnelles sur les marchés du monde entier, Groupon est rapidement devenu populaire. Leur API est ouverte à tous ceux qui s'inscrivent, et ils ont une déclaration sur leur site accueillant ouvertement les développeurs pour créer des améliorations, de nouvelles extensions et interfaces. À partir de 2011, lorsque ce livre a été écrit, ils devraient bientôt être rendus publics. Les analystes s'attendent à ce que l'entreprise se porte bien.

Adobe est bien connu pour son lecteur PDF Reader et son application vidéo Flash, mais la société fait en réalité bien plus. Leur Creative Suite rassemble un ensemble d'outils qui aident les utilisateurs à concevoir et à formater des sites Web, des applications et des vidéos. Ils proposent également un kit de développement logiciel appelé Flex, ainsi que des outils de développement pour les applications mobiles. En 2011, ils ont rassemblé tous leurs produits et les ont regroupés sur une seule plate-forme, Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform. Alors qu'Apple a traité Adobe avec hostilité, d'autres plateformes ont été plus accueillantes ; par exemple, Google Android prend en charge Flash mais pas Apple. Adobe devra trouver un moyen de traiter avec Apple pour que sa plate-forme prospère.

L'exécution d'applications dans le cloud peut être un moyen pour les entreprises d'externaliser le développement et la maintenance du matériel et des logiciels. Marc Benioff, le fondateur de Salesforce.com, pense que c'est une excellente idée, et il espère que vous considérerez son service. Salesforce a ouvert son infrastructure aux développeurs afin que les entreprises puissent exécuter toutes les applications qu'elles souhaitent sur les serveurs Salesforce.com. Ils offrent une large gamme d'outils pour aider les développeurs à y parvenir via sa plate-forme Force.com.

LinkedIn is huge, and it continues to grow in popularity. It’s a good place for job recruiters to find highly qualified candidates. Like other successful platforms, its APIs are available to developers on its website.

Quora provides crowdsourced questions and answers. They don’t have an open API. Strictly speaking, they aren’t exactly a platform, but they do have a strong community centered on their website. It’s really more than a plank than a platform, but we’ll keep our eye on this to see if a platform develops out of it.

No one knows what the future holds for these, or any other, platforms. Don’t let uncertainty hold you back. Use the websites that suit you and your circumstances the best, not because they are on this list or because they dominate the field. Create your own platforms in the spirit of enterprise and enthusiasm. Remember, this is a rapidly changing environment. Sometimes you’ve just got to take the plunge.

Chapter 12: Coda: A Glimpse of What’s Beyond

Platforms can bring great success to a business. They are the best business model for these times because a platform is never a finished product. It always changes and grows. It’s adaptable. We need an adaptable business model because all kinds of technological changes are on their way. New products and services are here, like wearables, robot vacuum cleaners and facial recognition.

Le Web 3.0 sera axé sur les données intégrées. Ainsi, par exemple, lorsque vous regardez une date sur votre calendrier, il vous montre les photos que vous avez prises ce jour-là, votre liste de courses, vos transactions bancaires, etc.

Demain appartient au Web sémantique. Tout comme les documents ont des normes, les données devraient avoir des normes. De cette façon, les données peuvent être utilisées sur toutes les plateformes. Cela changera la façon dont nous interagissons avec les données et la façon dont les données interagissent avec nous. Les données seront utilisées de manière omniprésente ; même notre travail dentaire sera réalisé grâce à la nanobiotique.

It’s predicted that the process will accelerate. Some theorists say that people are going to merge with computers. We could be seeing the dawn of nonbiological intelligence. We might be on the threshold of singularity, that is to say, the entire planet could be united as a single intelligence composed of individual people and machines just as human brains are composed of individual cells and other tissues.

We don’t yet know what all these new things mean for platforms. The Gang of Four will certainly do their best to change and adapt, attempting to stay ahead of the curve. These strategies have done well for them in the past, so they likely won’t abandon them. Beyond that, it’s not possible to predict what these companies will do. For one thing, big companies don’t broadcast their plans until they’re ready to implement them. There’s no point in tipping your hand to the competition. But even more to the point, the big companies probably don’t know yet themselves how they’re going to meet future challenges. Even the smart guys can’t predict the future, so like the rest of us, they have to respond to change as it occurs.

That isn’t to say the big companies passively lie around waiting for change. They strike a balance, experimenting with things and making provisional plans. They do everything they can to prepare for change. The Big Four do have an advantage, they can afford to make some mistakes. Other companies not as much.

Prepare for the future. Don’t expect amazing results, but do build a platform with planks. Take the advice in this book, look to the Big Four for role models. Avoid the pitfalls of failed companies. Stay open to change. We’d all like to live in simpler times, but it just isn’t possible to go backwards. Adapt. Change. Grow. Live in the now.