Reflections on the 2018 Platform Strategy Summit at MIT, Boston, MA

Digital platforms are reshaping the world. The 2018 Platform Strategy Summit, presented by the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy took place at the MIT Medialab, Boston, USA on the 13th of July 2018. This event gathered a global community of executives and thought leaders to explore the economics and management of platform-centered markets and discuss their implications for managers, industry and governmental policy.

Some of the speakers included:

• Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT IDE Director, Schussel Family Professor of Management Science

• Geoffrey Parker, Professor, Dartmouth and MIT IDE Digital Fellow (Summit Co-Chair)

• Marshall Van Alstyne, Boston University Professor (Summit Co-Chair)

• Mona Vernon, Chief Technology Officer, Thomson Reuters Labs

• Peter C. Evans, Principal, KPMG, (Summit Co-Chair)

• Peter Coles, Head Economist, Airbnb

• Irfan Ganchi, Global Head of Advertising and Marketing Products, Uber

• Ahmad Anvari, Product Lead, Optimization & Automation, Uber

• Uri Sarid, CTO MuleSoft

• Rodney Sampson, Executive Chairman & CEO of Opportunity Hub

• Mike Morris, CEO, Topcoder

• Eamonn Maguire, Global Lead in Financial Services, KPMG

• Gerhard Lohmann, Chief Financial Officer of Reinsurance, Swiss Re.

• Thomas Friese, VP for Digital Ecosystem Platform at Siemens Healthcare

• Michael Palumbo, Head of Data Innovation, Marine, R2 Data Labs Rolls-Royce

We were specifically interested in the current thinking within this community around platform design, as well as the manner in which global players are engaging with some of the issues around digital platforms that are specifically relevant to our developing world context in South Africa.