Here's Silicon Valley's Strategic Advantage: Its Platforms

In a paper in Harvard Business Review, Kellogg School of Management professor Robert Wolcott illustrates the problems that Netflix founder Reed Hastings had in 1997 in building a platform. Hastings had always wanted to provide on-demand video, but the technology infrastructure just wasn't there when he needed it. So he started by building a DVDs-by-mail business -- while he plotted a long-term strategy for today's platform. According to Wolcott, Uber has a strategic intent of providing self-driving cars, but while the technology evolves it is managing with human drivers. It has built a platform that enables rapid evolution as technologies, consumer behaviors, and regulations change.