Portfolio
The Platform Delusion: Who Wins and Who Loses in the Age of Tech Titans
Key Metrics
- Jonathan A Knee
- Portfolio
- Hardcover
- 9780593189436
- 9 X 6 X 0.69 inches
- 1.06 pounds
- Business & Economics > Management - General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Many think that they understand the secrets to the success of the biggest tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. It's the platform economy, or network effects, or some other magical power that makes their ultimate world domination inevitable. Investment banker and professor Jonathan Knee argues that the truth is much more complicated--but entrepreneurs and investors can understand what makes the giants work, and learn the keys to lasting success in the digital economy.
Knee explains what really makes the biggest tech companies work: a surprisingly disparate portfolio of structural advantages buttressed by shrewd acquisitions, strong management, lax regulation, and often, encouraging the myth that they are invincible to discourage competitors. By offering fresh insights into the true sources of strength and very real vulnerabilities of these companies, The Platform Delusion shows how investors, existing businesses, and startups might value them, compete with them, and imitate them.
The Platform Delusion demystifies the success of the biggest digital companies in sectors from retail to media to software to hardware, offering readers what those companies don't want everyone else to know. Knee's insights are invaluable for entrepreneurs and investors in digital businesses seeking to understand what drives resilience and profitability for the long term.
Author Bio
Professor Knee teaches Media Mergers and Acquisitions, co-teaches The Media Industries: Public Policy and Business Strategy with Professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School, and co-teaches Digital Investing with Adjunct Professor Jeremy Philips. He also serves as co-director of the Media & Technology Program with Professor Sarvary. Professor Knee is a Senior Advisor at Evercore Partners. Before joining Evercore as a Senior Managing Director in 2003,
Professor Knee was a Managing Director and Co-head of Morgan Stanley's Media Group. He was previously Publishing Sector Head in the Communications, Media and Entertainment Group at Goldman Sachs. Prior to becoming an investment banker, he was Director of International Affairs at United Airlines and served as Adjunct Professor of Law at Northwestern University.
His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post and he is the author of Class Clowns: How the Smartest Investors Lost Billions in Education (2017), co-author of Curse of the Mogul (Portfolio:2009) and author of The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade that Transformed Wall Street (Oxford: 2006).
Source: Columbia Business School
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