Platform Leadership: How Intel, Microsoft and Cisco Drive Industry Innovation.

AuthorMarshall, Jeffrey
PositionBookshelf

Platform Leadership: How Intel, Microsoft and Cisco Drive Industry Innovation. By Annabelle Gawer & Michael A. Cusumano. Harvard Business School Press, 305 pages. $29.95.

This book has an intriguing fundamental thesis: that a few large and highly successful technology companies have become "platform leaders -- companies that provide the technological foundation on which other products, services and systems are built." In general, it explores how these companies fashioned their strategies rather than certifying their dominance.

It's hard to argue with the choices made by Gawer and Cusumono, business professors at INSEAD and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively, but the book is a bit lopsided: Three long chapters are devoted to Intel, where the authors did extensive interviews, versus just one chapter for Microsoft and Cisco combined. Clearly, the level of...

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