How to Avoid Platform Traps

Many of today’s most successful technology businesses—Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Uber, and Airbnb, to name just a few—are based on a platform business model.

Platforms are multisided networks that bring together two or more types of users and facilitate transactions among them. For example, eBay links buyers and sellers; Playstation links game developers with gamers; Apple’s App Store transfers applications from software developers to iPhone and iPad users.

Today, many entrepreneurs and established businesses are trying to co.....