Platform leadership: staffing and training the inverted firm

摘要: As the number and scope of platform companies grow, platform-specific talent and leadership demands have grown. This paper explores the growing demand for platform professionals and leadership competencies. The authors collected and analyzed over 11,080 platform job postings over one year by 2,700 companies worldwide. Analysis of this data reveals demand for a range of platform talent capabilities. Six role archetypes stand out: platform strategy, platform product management, platform ecosystem management, platform engineering, platform data management, and platform trust, privacy & compliance. The paper explores the leadership capabilities that are particularly important and distinct from non-platform organizations. The paper provides cogent recommendations to aspiring platform professionals. It also provides comprehensive recommendations to companies, which are divided into near-term actions that can be taken immediately and longer-term actions that can be implemented over a 2-5-year time horizon. Finally, the paper provides a comprehensive global survey of platform-specific executive training programs available from universities and specialized training organizations based in the US, Europe, and Asia. Companies referenced in the study include but are not limited to ABB, Amazon, American Express, Benefitfocus, CVS, Deliveroo, Glassdoor, JPMorgan Chase, Lazada, Netflix, Peloton, Refinitiv, Twitter, Walmart, and Zoom.