Cole Call: We used to be optimistic that essentially any platform business would be winner-take-all. Now you see time after time after time, it's not the case. What is it about platforms that gives them significant power but makes them not a clear winner? Cole Call: There are a few things. If you're Uber, you have to fight for every market individually. And then there's something that I often describe as the sort of implicit orientation of a platform.
In an era driven by network effects, smaller players struggle to compete against bigger platforms. The trick to gaining ground on a much larger rival, says Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, is choosing a strategy that can’t easily be imitated. A good example is TaoBao’s strategy for displacing eBay in China, back in 2007.