Comments for Mind. your own. business school – a case study of a multi-sided platform

The environment does not allow an exponential growth of users as the market is limited. Every year a small segment (“prospective Master students with a strong academic and professional background”) of users will replace the previous one how found a school. This means that the service provided by the platform could not be sufficient in order to keep previous members active during a long period. If a competitor enters into the market they will fight for the same market shares. By proposing different alternative or comparison they are differentiating them, but will that be enough? The main strength of the platform it’s the contact with several alumni, but will they be seen by the users as a reliable objective source of information?
We could see MYBS as a platform providing informational publicity from the best business schools to futures students in order to attract a maximum of possible candidates. If we increase the number of schools promoted gradually and without decreasing the quality standards of the information, prospective students will probably perceive a better utility of information as they will have more choices trough a single platform. Relying on the classification of a single ranking even if in this case it’s the Financial Times could be perceived negatively. Other rankings could be taken into account like Forbes in order to increase the offers. By doing so the number of user could increase as the concentration of useful information is increasing too. At that point, the business schools already present will not feel the competition as strong as if the number of user has been the same during the expansion of school partners. The best option could be to increasing partnerships of quality with schools as the level of users increase in order to mitigate the negatives effects of competition. The number of users increasing will increase the network effect and by doing so the attractiveness of the platform for all the intermediaries.
A market development may be the answer to this problem either by expanding the same platform to other regions or by adding new schools less well ranked into their platforms.

I believe that MYBS has adapted itself reasonably well to the current competitive environment but I do believe it has other ways it can drive further user engagement to further strengthen its multi sided network effects. The choice to make the Users side the fully subsizised side of the platform was, in my view, clearly the right choice. as the market of prospective business school students is much more fragmented as well as more likely to exhibit strong price elasticity, it makes a lot of sense to offer the service to these users for free, not unlike who Linkedin approaches their multi-sided model.

I believe the future prospects for these sorts of services to be moderate overtime. As tuition rate increases among other factors have caused MBA admissions to decline over time[1] , there will no doubt continue to be large amounts of students who chose to pursue business school at some point in their careers, and the ever increasing cost of the degree will make the search for the right program even more important to students. The other side of the platform will likely also continue to require this sort of engagement with prospective students as traditional MBA programs could be disrupted by online educational offerings as well as potential homogenization of the program offerings.

I believe MYBS should absolutely add potential employers as an additional side of this platform. Employment possibilities post graduation would certainly be of interest to many if not all students interested in pursing business school and getting exposed to available opportunities with their MBA degree and what firms are looking for in candidates can only be of benefit to students in their search for the ideal program. It also creates value for employers as another tool to reach out to the best and brightest candidates earlier on than their relationships with business programs. Adding employers not only increases user engagement but provides another revenue channel for MYBS.

I believe in the increasingly international world we occupy it would add significant value to the platform to add other MBA programs from around the globe. Restricting it to a certain geographic area is not the key value being provided, giving prospective students the right information that can be easily accessed is the key to the platform’s value, which the necessary information could very well be information on non European business schools. Gaining scale within the market category could also be a tool to prevent international services from entering and attempting to compete in European bschools as well.

I believe this sort of service would work extremely well for other professional degrees, such as law schools (JD) due to the vast amount of program choices available as well as significant tuition fees required, having a resource to sort through the available options efficently (reducing search costs) is definitely something that could bring value to other degrees other than just MBAs.

[1]http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444433504577651962999932518

MYBS has benefited as a MSP by fulfilling an information gap in the market: business school search engine and comparison at the master level. When a bachelor student in business or related areas wants to extend his/her education path, he/she is faced with two traditional offers: MBA or master programs (each one with different characteristics, target market, requirements and so on), and while for the former there is plenty of options providing this informative service (mba institute, bloomberg business, startclass etc) it is not the case for the latter.
Addressing the issue of including employers as an additional side, I consider that MYBS do better by focusing on the academic side and limiting the inclusion of the employers as a sixth player. Reasons for this include the mentioned conflict of interest that could arise between the employers and the business schools (important source of income), lost of the already existing clear goal and objectives of the platform and unnecessary use of effort and resources to satisfy a probably small group of possible customers, i.e. recent graduates that are not sure about pursuing a master degree or starting their professional career and that already have access to platforms exclusively dedicated to the job search. Moreover, the decision of including the employers as an additional side would put MYBS at competition with existing and more experienced firms engaged in the matching of recent graduates and employers, therefore, MYBS would have to be in position of making attractive offers in order for employers to come and participate in their platform. MYBS would do better by enhancing its current business proposition, for example, on the business school side the company could not only include universities but also education companies dedicated to exam preparation (particularly GMAT but also language exams) or companies that offer advice and accompanying services during the whole application process; after all, in many cases, it is the application stage the crucial step when choosing a business school and not so much the student´s preferences/desires or suitability to the university. In fact, we see how some of the MBA search engines offer the possibility to filter universities according to GMAT or Toefl minimum score.
Regarding the possible expansion of MYBS, we see how currently it already gives information of BS in different countries from the five continents. Although, the available information is not so extensive for universities in remote latitudes, it is a plus for students to have the possibility of having in mind a wider range of options. The inclusion of different degrees (Bachelor, MBA, PhD…) would also represent additional value for the same target market; however MYBS should be careful to maintain the user friendly platform they have today. Satisfied users at the entry level (Bachelor) are highly expected to be future users if they intend to pursue future education programs, thus addressing the challenge of not returning students. The same business model of MYBS could be replicated in different fields of study nonetheless I would recommend some kind of “sister” independent platforms (like Mind Your Law School and similar), this in order to preserve the strengths of the platform and to maintain the image of business students-focus.
Finally, I think that MYBS can foster even more its key feature of the alumni section, for example by having a space of most frequently Q&A for each of the universities that offers additional important information as well as information related to less easy to measure aspects like campus life, extracurricular activities, and quality of the entry-level job offers. A way to stimulate active participation from alumni would be by highlighting their exposure and image within the site, so there would be some kind of prestige and pride in being part of the MYBS platform. One last recommendation would be the design of a proprietary MYBS index to assess and compare the quality of the programs so there would be a extra point of view other than that of the financial times ranking.

Through my comment I’ll try to answer some questions asked at the end of the article.

* Should MYBS include employers as an additional side?

My opinion is that MYBS should not include employers as an additional side. In addition to the reasons listed in the article I will highlight 3 points in favour of not include employers as an additional side.
Firstly, most of the universities already have partnerships with employers. If you include employers you will decrease the value of these partnerships. It will lead to the decrease of the value proposition to both universities and employers.
Secondly, add employers will change the brand image and it’s hard to predict if this change will be positive or negative. Nonetheless, if you add employers you will have to change the name “MYBS” which is likely to cost a lot.
Eventually, it will be difficult to select which employers could be in the additional side. It’s quite easy to select university because they all have the same purpose (provide the best education path) and MYBS just have to chose in a ranking list to be sure of the quality of the universities and it will fit the expectations of the students. It’s far more difficult to do it with employers because you would have to decide which criteria will be used to select the companies. Maybe those criteria won’t fit the students’s expectations.

* Should the platform expand its offer to non-European business schools, different degrees (Bachelor, PhD) or different fields of study?

In order to know if MYBS should expand its offer to non-European business school it should be interesting to know more about the possible fallouts of a launch on the non-European market. In order to do so, an extensive study about competition, interest of students and universities should be conducted. Then MYBS would have to evaluate the gain of such an expansion. At first glance, I’d say that one day MYBS will have to expand its field of activity to non-European business schools. Indeed, distance is decreasing everyday with the development of new technologies, the markets globalisation and the mobility of students all around the world, MYBS will not be able to stay competitive if it doesn’t expand its offer to non-European business schools.

Extend the platform to bachelors seems difficult. First of all, students may be more reluctant to the idea of studying abroad. They may be not sure of the studies that they want to do. The value of abroad bachelors may be seen with a lower value because it’s mainly about theory learnings and there are Exchange possibilities which are less constraining when students are only entering into studies. Finally, what about universities don’t want to draw Bachelor students?

At first sight the extension of the platform to PhD doesn’t seems a good idea. In fact the number of students in PhD may not be great enough to cover the cost of extending the platform. Besides, add something else could complicate the website, as for the bachelors what about Universities don’t want to draw PhD students?

In my view an extension to other fields may not be as interesting as it seems. In my opinion the main points are: First, the website’s name wouldn’t be correct anymore, which means that it would be necessary to advertise which represents a huge cost. Secondly, Business is a broad field of study and interaction between different countries can leverage a huge amount of relevant knowledge to manage multicultural companies and globalisation ’s consequences. It’s not the case for all the fields, then the value proposition concerning other fields will be lower and it will not attract as many students. Finally the university ranking may not be the same for all fields and it will bring a new problem in the selection of universities.

* Or is its focus on a restricted set of reputed business schools and their Master programs its key asset?

Through what I discussed above I’ve tried to answer this question. My opinion is that the focus on a restricted set of business schools and their Master programs is the key asset of MYBS. Nonetheless, one day or another the platforms will have to extend on a international level because of the globalisation.

To begin I would like to give my point of view on the future prospects of MYBS. I think this platform have a good chance to become popular in the business world. But in order to reach this popularity and a reputation for quality, they really have to put forward the fact that only top universities and business schools have access to the platform. They must point out the ranking of each business school in the classification of the Financial Times. I would then recommend focus the strategy on this specific argument.

Concerning the question of including employers as an additional side, I would like to make some suggestions. In my opinion, it would be a good ting to have employers included on the platform. First of all employers could help prospective master students in their choices by providing comments on different masters. Comments based on the competences of alumni that they have hired just after their master. So the idea is that companies would have access to the platform only if they have hired students graduated from one of the business school member of the platform. It would provide prospective master students additional information concerning the quality of each master. I insist on the fact that these employers will not be there to hired students interest by doing a master. They will only provide testimonials to prospective students.
Then what would be the advantage for these companies to become members of the platform?
My idea is to create an additional offer to those companies. I think it could be interesting to create a new section on the platform. This section would also be multi-sided. The first side would be companies having hired students graduated from member business schools and ready to hire new ones because of their satisfaction. The second side would be graduated master students from member business schools looking for a job. This section would then help the graduated in their employment search.
To summarize, the member companies of the platform would first of all provide information to prospective master students on the different business schools and secondly offer jobs to graduated students.
This is a first suggestion of expend in the offer of the platform.

Let’s now turn on the other possibilities the platform has to expend her offer. I my eyes, the idea to give access to non-European business school is not bad. Of course this access must be restricted and authorized only to top quality business schools. This selection should therefore also be based on a deemed ranking. As I said above, the platform has to focus her strategy on the top quality of the member business schools.
On the other hand I don’t think including bachelor degrees would be a good idea, it wouldn’t make sense with the presence of employers on the platform. Moreover, I have the feeling that it would reduce the reputation for high quality of the platform.