The rise of the digital (psychology) platform business

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Mapping a business model for Psychology to create sustainable and scalable digital solutions.

Author: Dr Anna-Rosa le Roux
With special thanks to Bruce Adrain (Head Innovation Capability and Build, Liberty Group South Africa) for his comments and input.

New models for digital

We are living in an always on, digital ready and hyper-experience world. A new organisational model emerged in the digital space that not only embrace the complexity that this era presents, but also accelerate value creation. In his capacity as curator of the Value Shift research, Barry Libert states:

Network Orchestrators receive valuations two to four times higher, on average, than companies with the other business models.

What drives this trend towards networked businesses?

Two key trends create the perfect storm to disrupt traditional value chains. On the one hand, we have the centrality of the customer that accelerates the need for more sophisticated user offerings, and on the other we have an exponential explosion of enabling technologies.

Simone Cicero, in his article: ‘Cognitive Capitalism, baby’, illustrates this shift in customer expectations by highlighting key attributes of modern products and services:
  • Fast: instantly searchable and accessible
  • Relevant: fulfilling our needs
  • Personalised: creating custom solutions for our needs
  • Human: creating an interface that is friendly, accessible and interacting as if we are human beings
The platform business enters as an entity positioned to respond to these hyper product and service environments. Due to the complexity that underlies this environment, various role players need to organise and collaborate together so that we get an ecosystem of role players. The focus of the platform business is not owning all the subsets, but enabling value creation through connecting and enabling value adding user experiences.

What is a platform business model?

Platform business models embrace a whole value creation process, where all the different role players co-create value in the ecosystem that is defined. Platform design is what Johan Hagel in the 2008 Harvard Business Review referred to as ‘not only a business model, but it shapes strategy:
an effort to broadly redefine the terms of competition for a market sector through a positive, galvanizing message that promises benefits to all who adopt the new terms
Platform business models enable users to interact in the ecosystem, accessing rich bundled content. There are two ways for platforms to create value, namely: 
  • Innovation platforms: In these platforms the owners provide the technology or foundation that innovators can use to develop services or products that complement each other.
  • Transaction platforms: Facilitates transactions between various entities (individuals or organisations), usually difficult without the platform to find each other.
The platform business model enables organisations to respond effectively to a hyper service delivery demand environment. Its technology platform enables the creation of modular products and services that are easily combined into new value adding bundles. Evolving products are enabled by the always on feedback of the role players in the ecosystem. The platform business model creates a vehicle for fast and deep learning through its action research components.

Role players in the platform ecosystem

The platform business model necessitates various archetypes to maximise value creation in the ecosystem, each with a different need and motivational driver. Platform owners own the vision behind the platform and need to ensure that this vision evolves. Partners are professional entities (either organisations or individuals) that create additional value for the ecosystem. Peer producers that are interested to provide value on the supply side of the system by way of improving these capabilities, whilst peer consumers are interested in the value that is created in the platform. External stakeholders are interested in the platform's success or failure, governing outcomes or regulating it.

Worklife Digital as a platform business model

With the digital era as backdrop, we reflected on how psychologists could uniquely add value in the digital era, offering contextually relevant solutions, specifically to create a sustainable future. “How can we use the application of various psychology theories and ever evolving new practices to create value?”
Our vision at Worklife Digital is ‘To create a sustainable, balanced future for all stakeholders in the Worklife Digital Ecosphere’. We wanted to lower the technical and financial thresholds for psychologists to leverage Digital Freud for content delivery to audiences on a global scale.
We developed the concept of digital psychology journeys to accelerate personal growth, boost productivity and enhance customer experience in the digital world. These journeys are implemented using a Finite State Machine (FSM), a novel approach to model problems that has certain advantages over traditional software tools. Our journeys are available to our corporate customers to download for free or to buy at a portal interface called Digital Freud. Worklife Digital employs a scientist - practitioner approach to be able to provide evidence of solution outcomes.

Our partners are professional psychologists/ businesses that create value in the ecosystem by designing digital journeys using templated software to deliver and interact with their clients and partners. OD Coach and Work Psych are our pioneering partners in the community.

A call to action

We invite peer producers to think-tank and improve the capabilities of the journeys or create additional value on the supply side of the platform.
Do you have a unique product, process or service offering that you want to scale digitally?
Email us at journeys@worklife.digital if you would like to engage with us in this ecosystem. We are driven by values of collaboration, value creation and innovation.

References

J Hagel, J. Seely Brown, L Davison - Shaping Strategy in a World of Constant Disruption Harvard Business Review. (2008). Available at: https://hbr.org/2008/10/shaping-strategy-in-a-world-of-constant-disruption

Cicero, S. That's Cognitive Capaitalism baby. Available at: https://medium.com/@meedabyte/that-s-cognitive-capitalism-baby-ee82d1966c72#.6sd6aold1.





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