BusinessHABBuild Successful Npower Platform: Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development.
Despite the current high level of unemployment.
Harnessing Nigeria’s young demography.
Through appropriate skill development efforts.
Provides an opportunity to achieve inclusion and productivity within the country.
Large-scale skill development is the main policy thrust of the N-Power Programme.
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1. Build Successful Npower Platform
If you want to compete on the playing field with the most successful people of today.
Then you might need to consider a platform strategy.
Any business, particularly start-ups and small businesses.
But even businesses with a more traditional business model.
Can and should think how and where they could apply a platform business model.
Good point that most who don’t do well normally overlook.
2. Get the aim
Every platform should start with the aim of enabling interaction between participants.
The producer and the consumer.
Platform builder should strive to add value to all the players in the triangle and at times within the square.
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3. What is a platform?
In its simplest form, a platform is a mechanism or network—physical or digital.
That creates value for individuals because it facilitates connections and exchanges.
Between people for products, services and information.
When you think about it, platforms have existed for years.
Shopping malls are a platform to link buyers to the clothing, shoes, home goods.
nd other products being sold by merchants.
And a television station or newspaper is the platform to connect advertisers to viewers or readers.
Today, some of the biggest names in business found success by creating platforms for their niche—Amazon, Facebook, Airbnb—just to name a few.
4. Build Successful Npower Platform
Even the Ford Motor Co. had the foresight to test out a shift in business models—from an asset company to a platform company—with its pilot car sharing program.
Ridesharing platforms such as Lyft and Uber have changed the way people use cars.
And instead of sticking with the status quo, Ford is trying to adjust its business model.
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5. Get the Benefits of a platform
Platforms have allowed small businesses and start-ups.
To disrupt major business segments.
Even though the more established businesses had more resources (physical assets, raw materials, etc.).
That had traditionally been the predictors of success, than the new businesses.
Facebook doesn’t create most of the content on its site.
But it attracts 1.3 billion users who regularly consume the news.
Videos and photos shared on the platform.
Uber doesn’t really own any cars.
But it’s overtaking the taxi business across the United States.
Alibaba doesn’t own a piece of inventory, but it’s a global marketplace.
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6. Build Successful Npower Platform
The platform approach is all about figuring out a way that an external ecosystem.
Can be leveraged to do the work and create value.
Today, many of the problems that can be automated already have been.
So the next way to gain a competitive advantage is to leverage the ecosystem you create on a platform.
The better your ecosystem is at creating value, the more successful your business will be.
7. Build Successful Npower Platform
Platforms have tremendous power because they can unlock new supply and demand streams.
Eliminate gatekeepers and provide valuable connections to a community to gain insight.
Whereas in the 20th century an organisation’s ability to leverage production efficiencies via economies of scale propelled success.
In the 21st century it is creating “demand economies of scale” that use technological improvements to create bigger networks and more value for users.
The more valuable a network/platform to the end user, the more successful it becomes.
These are just a few of the reasons more traditional or “pipeline” companies.
Those who create a product or service and channel it to consumers, are working to develop their own platforms in addition to their traditional ways of doing business.
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8. Know how to develop a platform strategy
First, while there have been many businesses that succeed with the pitch, “We’re Uber for. . . {insert your product here}.
It’s important to develop a platform strategy that highlights your unique value proposition.
And avoid mimicking what’s out there if what’s out there won’t lead to your own business success.
To create a solid platform strategy, you must consider:
1. How will our platform support the exchange of value?
2. How will you attract and drive users to your platform?
3. How will your platform encourage interactions to become the core of a community that connects people and adds value?
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9. Build Successful Npower Platform
Every platform should start with the aim of enabling interaction between participants, the producer and the consumer.
It is the exchange of value that attracts users to the platform.
The platform also needs to enable the creation of a value unit.
For example, for Airbnb, the service listing information is the value unit created by the seller and then served to buyers based on their search query or previous interests.
This is the basis for exchange.
This is often facilitated by filters, which are algorithmic software tools that ensure users receive only the most relevant and valuable information.
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10. Build Successful Npower Platform
While “interaction” is the why of platform design, attracting users and encouraging interactions is the how.
Three functions in particular must be performed very well to encourage a high volume of valuable interactions: Pull, facilitate and match.
One powerful tool to encourage users to come and use the platform is the feedback loop
11. Build Successful Npower Platform
Platforms must also keep users’ attention once they become members.
For example, Facebook realised that its users found the platform valuable only after they had a minimum number of connections.
So the company shifted its efforts away from recruiting new members and towards helping existing ones find friends.
To facilitate, platforms may need to roll out creative tools to smooth interactions.
Canadian photography platform 500px does this by enabling photographers to host their entire portfolio on the platform for easy viewing and exchange.
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12. Build Successful Npower Platform
Successful matching is the icing on the cake.
Platforms accomplish this by using data about producers, consumers.
The value units created and the goods and services exchanged.
The more data a platform has and the effectiveness with which it is used by algorithms can ensure effective filtering and greatly aid interaction.
All these three functions are essential to a successful platform and feed each other.
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13. Build Successful Npower Platform
Successful platforms scale by layering new interactions on top of the core interactions.
Take Uber and Lyft for example, that started experimenting with new ride-sharing services that complement their personal taxi business model
UberPool and Lyft Line allowed two or more passengers traveling to the same place to find one another and share a ride, reducing their costs and increasing the fare for the driver.
Uber is also now helping drivers finance car purchases by acting as a middle man to guarantee car loans for its drivers.
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14. Build Successful Npower Platform
Adding new features and functionalities can increase a platform’s usefulness and popularity.
But it can also make it complex. One way to manage complexity is to change the core platform slowly while making changes at the periphery to cater to certain groups of customers. Amazon Web Services, for example, the most successful platform in cloud-based storage, focuses on optimising a handful of basic operations, such as data storage, computation and messaging. Other services used by just a handful of AWS customers are restricted to the periphery.
15. Exchange of value
How will participants in your platform benefit from others in the platform? Essential to a successful platform is determining how your platform will create and capture value.
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16. Attract and drive users to your platform
Users won’t come to a platform if it doesn’t have value, and if you don’t have people coming to your platform it will fail. Just imagine what Uber would be without multiple drivers available to respond to many people’s needs for rides. To overcome the “chicken and the egg problem,” you should focus your mindset on “seeding” users to a platform, as this is the most critical step to platform success.
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17. Encourage interactions
A successful platform needs to encourage interactions between participants on the platform—consumers and those who can provide the goods, services or information those consumers want and need. Your goal is to make it THE place where consumers meet and commerce happens. In order to preserve value and an exemplary experience, you will ultimately need to develop some governance policies.
Whether you’re a start-up or have been in business for decades, it’s time to start considering your platform strategy to leverage a community to drive your future success.
Conclusion:
If you’re launching a new platform, or seeking to grow an existing one, attention to the above principles can maximise your chance of success. Sometimes, platforms cannot be entirely planned. Most of the activity is controlled by users. Therefore, a careful allowance for serendipitous discoveries and close monitoring of user behaviour are fruitful ways of finding new value, which then have to be fed back into the platform.
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