To paraphrase a famous Belgian surrealist artist: “This post is not a post“. More precisely, it is not a post yet, but it should become one once all your comments will be pieced together. My goal, in a very lazy educational way, is to build a case study of a specific multisided platform through crowdsourcing (which is, according to Wikipedia, “the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people“).
Source: cooltownstudios.com
The platform that I would like you to study could be of some interest for you if you plan further studies. Its name is MYBS, which stands for Mind Your Own Business School. Its purpose is to help you “find your perfect business school among 1023 masters in 185 cities“.
Here is a list of questions that you can choose to address in your comment (depending on the available information).
- Why can MYBS be described as a multisided platform (for a definition, see here)?
- Which sides has MYBS brought on board?
- Are there other sides that MYBS could bring on board?
- If yes, what are the pros and cons of such strategy?
- What is the price structure chosen by MYBS?
- What are the main functionalities and features of the platform?
- How do they facilitate the interaction among the members of the various sides?
- What are the governance rules (regulating access and interactions) put in place by MYBS?
- How do these rules affect the members of the various sides?
- In your view, did MYBS choose its functionalities and rules in an optimal way?
- Are there similar (online or offline) platforms competing with MYBS?
- Do these competitors share the same business model as MYBS (in terms of number and identity of sides, price structure, features and functionalities, governance rules)?
- What are the prospects for a platform such as MYBS?
As background readings, refer to the various posts on multisided platforms already published on this blog. Two other useful references are Hagiu (2014) and Eisenmann, Parker and Van Alstyne (2006).
