Platform Trumps Product, Or, Why I Love The App Store More Than Chocolate

God bless the app store.

It’s fast to download, seamless to install, easy to use,
convenient to have, fun to explore, simple to navigate and priceless to own.

But what’s truly amazing, what most companies probably
overlook, is that the app store has created nearly a half million new jobs
since its inception.

That’s a platform, not a product.

And
once more organizations accept that there’s no market for their scarcity, once they
give people the privilege to become part of their history, and once they
build a platform that makes it seamless for those people to express their
truest selves, their brand
will become a source of infinite opportunity for the people who matter most.

Next
time you sit down with your team, ask a few of these platform questions:

How
does this give people another reason to stop by? How
can visitors browse an entire collection of experiences? How can we directly
wire this into an existing online ecosystem? How do we make an event happen
beyond the walls of the venue? How do we
curate situations that bring discovery of cool new things? How can we give
people a huge digital sandbox to play in?

How can we let people engage with the project as it’s being produced? How do we
create a system that makes audiences equal members of the stage? How does this
give users an addictive reason to keep revisiting and refreshing? How can we build a soapbox open to anyone and everyone
as a place to speak their minds? How can we create a project that
grows incrementally with each online interaction and reaction?

Surrender is the new control.

Let them express the magic in their hearts, not just spend the
money in their wallets, and you’ll feel people power as wind at your back.