The landscape of digital servitization in the manufacturing sector is evolving, marked by a strategic shift from traditional product-centric to platform business models (BMs). Manufacturing firms often employ a blend of approaches to develop business-to-business (B2B) platforms, leading to significant reconfigurations in their BMs. However, they frequently encounter failures in their B2B platform development initiatives, leading them to abandon initial efforts and pivot to alternative platform strategies. Therefore, this study, through an in-depth case study of a manufacturer in the energy sector, articulates a three-phase pivoting framework for B2B platform BMs, including platform development and platform strategy. Initially, the manufacturer focused on asset-based product sales supplemented by asset maintenance services and followed an emergent platformization strategy characterized by the rise of multiple, independent B2B platforms catering to diverse functions. Next, focusing on the imposed customer journey strategy, the firm shifted towards a strategic multi-platform integration into an all-encompassing platform supported by artificial intelligence (AI), signaling a maturation of the platform BM to combine a wide range of services into an energy-performance-based contract. Finally, the last step of the firm's platform BM evolution consisted of a deliberate platform strategy open to external stakeholders and enveloping its data-driven offerings within a broader platform ecosystem. This article advances B2B platform BMs and digital servitization literature, highlighting the efficacy of a progressive approach and strategic pivoting.

Platforms have disrupted industries and made companies like Uber and Airbnb household names. As the concept becomes more entrenched, traditional companies and everyday businesses are looking to capitalize on a platform strategy to innovate new products and services and stay abreast of tough competition. A digital platform is an environment that connects different groups, allowing participants to benefit from the presence of others. Accenture called digital platforms the "most profound and global macroeconomic change since the industrial revolution." Half of companies surveyed by Accenture defined platforms as central to their business strategy, with 40% citing platforms as a critical enabler.

Summary: The results are in. There is only one demonstrably successful strategy for creating big wins for AI-first companies. We'll briefly summarize the other contenders that have fallen by the wayside and then lift the curtain on the winner. For the last three years we've been close observers of exactly what makes a successful AI/ML strategy. In addition to our own observations we've been listening closely to VCs and how they describe their internal process for deciding who to fund.

Summary: Booze Allen just launched a one-stop shop for all manner of pretested DNN models. This makes buying just like picking accounting, CRM, or HRIS software. Equally as important, it's a genius example of platform strategy to lock in customers and lock out competitors. The common vision of developing and deploying a deep learning model is half-a-dozen (at least) data scientists and engineers slogging away over maybe three to six months before having that MVP to first test in production. Go down to the software store, grab a COTS (commercial off the shelf) DNN for any image or text problem you may have, add a little transfer learning, and slam, bang, thank you ma'am you're in production.

Platform business models are booming--becoming bigger and more powerful than ever. Just consider that a few tweets from the president caused Amazon's market capitalization to fall by about $40 billion, or that Russian influencers were able to reach 126 million people through Facebook. At OpenMatters, we spend a lot of time studying network orchestration--business models where companies facilitate relationships and interactions, rather than serving up all the products, services, and pieces of content themselves. Think Facebook, Uber, Pinterest, Alibaba, Airbnb, and the myriad "unicorns" that are being showered in investor dollars. These companies are groundbreaking, leveraging networks effects and near-zero scaling cost to trounce competition or define new markets.