A platform strategy is a strategy built around a foundation that other products, services, and participants build on, rather than around a single product. It comes in two distinct kinds: a reuse-and-efficiency platform — a lowercase-p platform of reusable building blocks and interfaces that lowers cost and speeds development — and a value-compounding platform whose worth grows with adoption through network effects, which BRI Associates calls a PIVA (Platform of Increasing Value of Adoption). The two are not better or worse than each other; they differ in intent, expected returns, execution requirements, and risk, and they can be complementary. Most platform-strategy trouble comes from confusing the two — for example, building a reuse platform but expecting a PIVA's market-share economics.
Platform Strategy is one of BRI Associates' signature concepts. BRI's distinctive contribution is twofold: the P-vs-p distinction — separating a value-compounding platform (a PIVA) from a merely reusable lowercase-p platform, used not to rank the two but to align intent, expectations, and execution — and the PIVA–RPP dovetail, which pairs platform potential with a Company Fit / RPP assessment, since platform plays typically require Resources, Processes, and Priorities most established companies don't have. For the full treatment — the two kinds of platform, why the compounding kind is so powerful, and why most companies don't succeed — see the Platform Strategy pillar at /supporting/platform-strategy. Related Terminology Index entries: PIVA; Resources, Processes & Priorities (RPP).
