Catalyst Code
| Catalyst_code_cover.gif | |
| Author | David S. Evans Richard L. Schmalensee |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Business Strategy |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Harvard Business School Press |
Publication date | May 9, 2007 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Hardback |
| Pages | 228 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-1-4221-0199-5 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
Catalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World’s Most Dynamic Companies, a book by Market Platform Dynamics founder David S. Evans and MIT economist Richard L. Schmalensee, published in 2007. Evans is a professor at University College London and lecturer at University of Chicago. Schmalensee is former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management)
Overview
Catalyst Code is the first full-length book to examine the unique strategic problems faced by economic catalysts (or multi-sided platform businesses), enterprises that add value by facilitating interactions between two or more groups of customers who need each other in some way. Some familiar examples of economic catalysts are matchmakers, auction houses, securities markets, magazines, search engines, shopping centers, credit and debit cards, and software platforms. The authors analyzed the last two of these in the books Paying with Plastic and Invisible Engines, respectively.
Catalyst Code shows how the decline of newspapers is only one example of the growing power of Internet-based catalysts, like Google, to disrupt traditional industries and create entirely new ones.
The book draws on recent advances in economic theory, begun by Jean-Charles Rochet and Jean Tirole, and extensive interviews conducted by the business strategy consulting firm Market Platform Dynamics, to explain how economic catalysts differ from ordinary, single-sided businesses. Evans and Schmalensee present a new six-part framework for devising strategies for launching and sustaining successful catalyst businesses.
References
- Further reading
Armstrong, Mark, "Competition in Two-Sided Markets", RAND Journal of Economics vol. 37, no. 3 (Autumn 2006): 668-691. Eisenmann, T. G. Parker, and M. van Alstyne, “Strategies for Two-Sided Markets,” Harvard Business Review (October 2006). Evans, David S., “The Antitrust Economics of Multi-Sided Platform Markets,” Yale Journal on Regulation vol. 20, no. 2 (2003): 325-381. Evans, David S. and Richard Schmalensee. Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. Evans, David S., Andrei Hagiu, and Richard Schmalensee. Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Evans, David S. and Richard Schmalensee, “The Industrial Organization of Markets with Two-Sided Platforms,” Competition Policy International, vol. 3, no. 1 (2007): 151-180. Hagiu, Andrei, “Merchant or Two-Sided Platform?” Working Paper, Harvard Business School, May 2007. Rochet, Jean-Charles and Jean Tirole, “Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets,” Journal of the European Economic Association vol. 1, no. 4 (2003): 990-1209. Rochet, Jean-Charles and Jean Tirole, “Two-Sided Markets: A Progress Report,” RAND Journal of Economics vol. 37, no. 3 (Autumn 2006): 645-667.