38 DISRUPTION NETWORKS
SANGEET PAUL CHOUDARY is an entrepreneur , advisor , and business author . He is the CEO of Platformation Labs , a C-level advisory and research firm , focused on the research and application of platform strategies across industries . He is also the co-chair of The MIT Platform Strategy Summit at the MIT Media Labs . especially in emerging markets such as those in the Middle East , where privacy permeates both personal and corporate life . Companies fear that divulging their data or operating methods will damage their competitive edge . The reality , however , is that sharing is not a question of what to open , but of what to keep closed .
This is the part that companies miss ; they think of things as open versus closed , whereas the real key to openness is understanding which resources are critical , and which are not . Critical resources should be kept closed while the non-critical resources , where others can innovate , should be made open .
A number of years back , Google got this horribly wrong , but it learned its lesson very quickly . When Apple launched the iPhone , it decided to keep control over the handset and not share or open it out at all , only opening out the App Store and the creation of apps . You simply had to work with Apple on their terms . By contrast , when Google entered the mobile space , it created Android as a completely open platform . Soon after , however , it ran into the ground when other companies started creating their own version thanks to Android ’ s openness . Companies could just tweak things and totally bypass Google in the process .
Google ’ s response came in the form of maps – the tool that really makes a mobile phone useful : your location can be tracked and a lot of things can be provided on the basis of that . Specifically , Google closed access to its maps and forced companies to pay a licensing fee . Everything that was valuable , they put inside Google Play : the maps , the user data , the user login . Conversely , everything that was not valuable and could be innovated , such as operating systems , were opened out . Today , if you use an Android phone , your relationship is with Google and not with Samsung . That is how Google realized that openness is about what should be closed rather than what should be open .
A DIFFERENT TAKE ON CONNECTIVITY In all this talk of Google and digital connectivity , it is easy for companies in less technologically advanced parts of the world to conclude that platform strategies are not for them . But they are wrong . Let ’ s not forget , platforms of various shapes and sizes existed long before the arrival of the World Wide Web . It follows suit , therefore , that with a little ingenuity and innovation , where digital capabilities are lacking , platforms can still thrive .
Africa ’ s M-Pesa demonstrates how poor connectivity infrastructure can work with a platform model . The mobile phonebased money transfer service relies not on connectivity with end users , but on end users having access to the existing hawala system of money transfer . If that access is in place , then it is the agents who run the hawala system , not the consumers themselves , who become integral to the M-Pesa network . With the agents onboard , money can be transferred with ease , without the need for consumers to be connected .
The way in which e-commerce used to function in India before the country became
EMERGING MARKETS BUSINESS SUMMER 2017 ISSUE NO . 3