In The Platform Paradox, Wharton professor Mauro F. Guillén argues that many platforms misunderstand key aspects of what it takes to succeed globally, from culture and institutions to local competitive dynamics. He offers an integrated framework for digital platforms to identify and implement a strategy on a truly global scale.

Software is more important than ever today and yet its commercial value is steadily declining. Microsoft, for instance, has seen its gross margins decrease for a decade, while startups and corporations alike are distributing free software that would have been worth millions a few years ago. Welcome to the software paradox. In this O’Reilly report, RedMonk’s Stephen O’Grady explains why the real money no longer lies in software, and what it means for companies that depend on that revenue. You’ll learn how this paradox came about and what your company can do in response. This book covers: Why it’s growing more difficult to sell software on a standalone basis How software has come full circle, from enabler to product and back again The roles that open source, software-as-a-service, and subscriptions play How software developers have become the new kingmakers Why Microsoft, Apple, and Google epitomize this transition How the paradox has affected other tech giants, such as Oracle and Salesforce.com Strategies your software firm can explore, including alternative revenue models

Paradox — the simultaneous existence of two inconsistent states — has become orthodox. The orthodox is now the paradox. The orthodox world of ordering, controlling and organizing is increasingly opposed to a normalizing world of disordering, disrupting and disorganizing. And organization studies cannot avoid changing its conceptions of reality as that reality changes. In the future, organization studies will be the study of paradox, how to understand it, how to use it. In this book of original contributions addressed to management and organization paradoxes the authors address the new state of the field in terms of representations — representing paradoxes — and materialisations — materialising paradoxes. The themes — although varied, ranging from dialectics to internal tensions; from collaborations to ethics and value conflicts; from resistant labourers and wharfies to cartoon characters such as The Simpsons; from the irrationalities of finance to the psychoanalytic rationalities of auditing, and from issues of governance in Asian and international business to the composition of the new knowledge work force in the business professions — cohere around core aspects of paradoxicality. Overall, the contributions to Management and Organization Paradoxes are diverse and challenging. Each contribution takes a different angle on the central theme. All of the chapters illuminate diverse aspects of contemporary paradoxes in management and organization theory. The book provides, in each of its chapters, a challenge to the still overwhelmingly rationalist views of theory and practice that dominate the field and provides new directions for understanding organizations and management.The contributors are drawn from leading European, Australian and Latin American contributors.

The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.

A "skillful and lucid" (The Wall Street Journal) way of thinking about efficiency, challenging our obsession with it—and offering a new understanding of how to benefit from the powerful potential of serendipity. Algorithms, multitasking, the sharing economy, life hacks: our culture can't get enough of efficiency. One of the great promises of the Internet and big data revolutions is the idea that we can improve the processes and routines of our work and personal lives to get more done in less time than we ever have before. There is no doubt that we're performing at higher levels and moving at unprecedented speed, but what if we're headed in the wrong direction? Melding the long-term history of technology with the latest headlines and findings of computer science and social science, The Efficiency Paradox questions our ingrained assumptions about efficiency, persuasively showing how relying on the algorithms of digital platforms can in fact lead to wasted efforts, missed opportunities, and, above all, an inability to break out of established patterns. Edward Tenner reveals what we and our institutions, when equipped with an astute combination of artificial intelligence and trained intuition, can learn from the random and unexpected.

A trio of experts on high-tech business strategy and innovation reveal the principles that have made platform businesses the most valuable firms in the world and the first trillion-dollar companies. Managers and entrepreneurs in the digital era must learn to live in two worlds—the conventional economy and the platform economy. Platforms that operate for business purposes usually exist at the level of an industry or ecosystem, bringing together individuals and organizations so they can innovate and interact in ways not otherwise possible. Platforms create economic value far beyond what we see in conventional companies. The Business of Platforms is an invaluable, in-depth look at platform strategy and digital innovation. Cusumano, Gawer, and Yoffie address how a small number of companies have come to exert extraordinary influence over every dimension of our personal, professional, and political lives. They explain how these new entities differ from the powerful corporations of the past. They also question whether there are limits to the market dominance and expansion of these digital juggernauts. Finally, they discuss the role governments should play in rethinking data privacy laws, antitrust, and other regulations that could reign in abuses from these powerful businesses. Their goal is to help managers and entrepreneurs build platform businesses that can stand the test of time and win their share of battles with both digital and conventional competitors. As experts who have studied and worked with these firms for some thirty years, this book is the most authoritative and timely investigation yet of the powerful economic and technological forces that make platform businesses, from Amazon and Apple to Microsoft, Facebook, and Google—all dominant players in shaping the global economy, the future of work, and the political world we now face.

The Paradox of Regulation is a tour de force of regulatory scholarship that successfully contextualizes the regulatory project as an effort to reduce multiple forms of risk. Three case studies of regulatory reforms, fascinating in their own right, when read together forcefully demonstrate why context matters to the actuarial assessments, political realities, and possibilities for insuring safety, security and integrity. Haines, penetrating analysis presents no simple answers to what works and why. The Paradox of Regulation nimbly demonstrates that the strengths and limits of a particular regulatory reform must be understood as a complicated response to a dynamic constellation of actuarial, political, and socio-cultural risks.,- Nancy Reichman, University of Denver, US , This new book by Fiona Haines is an elegant but sophisticated analysis of the three risks (technical, social and political) that regulation must address if it is to be effective. This analysis is original and fresh bringing together critiques of risk based regulation with empirical literature on compliance and effectiveness evaluation. This is exactly the sort of book we need more of to develop and deepen empirical and theoretical research in regulatory scholarship: - it helpfully melds together different literatures and theoretical approaches with her own empirical work on regulatory reforms to build a multi-layered theoretical analysis that really pushes forward our understanding of regulation, why it happens and how it fails and succeeds., - Christine Parker, Monash University, Australia ,This is an insightful and nuanced analysis of the strengths and limitations of regulation. Through a close grained analysis of three recent disasters, Haines demonstrates that regulation is not just a technical but also a political and a social project and how a failure to recognise its multiple dimensions can lead to regulatory failure. This book is a major contribution that enriches our understanding of the challenges of risk management and of how best to address them.'- Neil Gunningham, Australian National University, Canberra , Fiona Haines shows us that regulatory policy is complex and paradoxical in ways that should require us to attend to the substance and the politics of specific regulatory regimes. This book is a major contribution to the reconceptualisation of risk and regulation. It is a perceptive treatment of the role of crisis by one of the best scholars of regulation we have., - John Braithwaite, Australian National University, Canberra