Strategy 2013
Platform Design Toolkit
Canvases for businesses that connect people instead of just serving them: ecosystems, not pipelines.
What it is
A set of connected canvases for designing platform and marketplace models: map the ecosystem's entities, understand what each side seeks and offers, design the transactions and the services that make exchanges happen. Where the Business Model Canvas assumes a pipeline, this assumes a network.
Reach for it when
- A marketplace or two-sided product gets forced through a one-sided canvas and it doesn't fit
- A workshop needs the whole ecosystem on the wall: producers, consumers, partners
- A platform team can't say which side it serves first
Running it
- Start with the ecosystem canvas: every entity that touches the platform, mapped by role.
- Pick the two entities whose exchange matters most and chart what each gives and gets.
- Design the core transaction before any feature list. The transaction is the product.
- Half a day for a first pass; the toolkit rewards a second session after real user conversations.
Watch out: The vocabulary is rich and it can eat the session. Facilitate toward one transaction designed end to end, not six canvases half-filled.
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Recent Comments (3)
This workshop was incredibly effective for our remote team! We adapted it slightly for a virtual setting and it worked wonderfully. The key was breaking into smaller breakout rooms.
Great resource! One tip: prepare all materials the day before to avoid any last-minute rushes.
Used this for our quarterly planning session. The structured approach really helped us stay on track!