Because the bulk of a platform's value is created by its community of users, the platform business must shift its focus from internal activities to external activities. In the process the firm inverts-it turns inside out, with functions from marketing to information technology to operations to strategy all increasingly centering on people, resources, and functions that exist outside the business, complementing or replacing those that exists inside a traditional business.
Geoffrey G. Parker, Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--and How to Make Them Work for You
business, firms, platform-building, processes