Organizations and Markets

| Peter Klein |

Luke has a nice post today about competition and cooperation among providers of complementary products — the “sixth force” that Michael Porter left out of his famous framework. Luke points us to “How Companies Become Platform Leaders”by Annabelle Gawer and Michael Cusumano in the Winter 2008 Sloan Management Review. As Luke notes (continuing this week’s Apple meme):

One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to pursue a product strategy and fail to recognize the platform value of their product. The best example of this is perhaps Macintosh computer which, due to its early technological lead, could have become the dominant platform for personal computing. Instead they priced high, failed to encourage complementary innovation, and let Microsoft become the dominant platform.

Porter does discuss complements in his newer work (e.g., here) but does not elevate them to the status of the original Fab Five.