The Architecture of Platforms—A Unified View

Working Paper: The Architecture of Platforms—A Unified View

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6025.html
Download the paper. Product and system designers have long exploited opportunities to create families of complex artifacts by developing and recombining modular components. An especially common design pattern is associated with the concept of a platform. HBS professor Carliss Baldwin and coauthor C. Jason Woodard shed light on the relationships between platforms and the systems in which they are embedded to better understand and explain firms and industries where platforms play an important role.