Platforms 4 Future: Recent Episodes
Matthias Walter, Nathalie Dumas Lamborghini
Hello and welcome to Platforms 4 Future.
This podcast is about building / scaling B2B platform ventures and to help you to accelerate and de-risks your journey with practical tips and insights.
In our conversations we talk to founders, executives and experts uncovering what they experienced and learned building their ventures. But we also cover new trends like ecosystem strategies, IoT & data platforms, web3 and sustainability. This podcast is complementary to our platform innovation kit toolset and the Platform academy where you can find more tools and learning opportunities for you and your team.
For more please visit platforminnovationkit.com
And now, enjoy todays conversation...
platformsforfuture
In our current podcast episode, we look at an aspect that doesn't come up so often in our conversations: the closing of a B2B platform. For this, we caught up with Henrik Hahn from Evonik Industries.
Henrik is Chief Digital Officer of the Evonik Group and CEO of Evonik Digital. In his role, he initiated the development of a marketplace in 2017 - an absolute novelty in the very traditional chemical industry. 3 years later, however, the platform is already history.
Why Evonik abandoned the idea, what hurdles Henrik had to deal with, and what he nevertheless learned from this journey into the startup world - that's what he talks about rather frankly with Natalie and Matthias.
In our latest Episode we were very pleased to welcome Thilo Kassen, Executive Manager of PRISMA Capacity, the leading gas capacity platform in Europe. Together with Thilo we discussed the interesting shareholder model behind the company and how sustainability and climate change affect the future gas market in the long run.
PRISMA Capacity is acting as the leading gas capacity trading platform in Europe. Within their marketplace they offer the possibility to easily auction transmission gas capacity at primary and secondary market level. Founded in 2005, PRISMA is currently connecting 45 infrastructure operators and over 600 shipper companies all over Europe. Although the number of players on the platform sounds quite small, PRISMA manages about 70% of the European gas market which is highly fragmented.
What makes PRISMA so special is the shareholder model they operate. Founded and owned by many energy companies around Europe, this cross-country collaboration model of PRISMA could act as a role model for other industries and european wide platforms initiatives
We are very pleased to discuss together with Thilo Kassen, Executive Manager of PRISMA Capacity, about the background of the company's foundation and the shareholder management that goes along with its business model.
Henrik is Chief Digital Officer of the Evonik Group and CEO of Evonik Digital. In his role, he initiated the development of a marketplace in 2017 - an absolute novelty in the very traditional chemical industry. 3 years later, however, the platform is already history.
Why Evonik abandoned the idea, what hurdles Henrik had to deal with, and what he nevertheless learned from this journey into the startup world - that's what he talks about rather frankly with Natalie and Matthias.
Platforms are an important topic for each company strategy. But we see in our projects a big knowledge gap on executive / leader level but also on team level. Companies think they can build platforms just like they built products. There was a study from BITKOM in 2019 showing this gap -> only 5% of Executives understand this topic and have the skills to lead those initiatives. We want to explore what kind of roles and skills are required to build & scale a platform. How to educate future platform leaders & teams?
Evangelos Avramakis is a recognised thought leader and advisor in the field of insurance industry. At the Swiss Re institute he works with focus on digital and consumer related topics as the Head of Digital Ecosystems R&D. Within his position, he analyses the mid- and long term developments of emerging technologies and business models. Covering both digitization and business developments Evangelos has also huge knowledge and insights about the evolution of platforms and ecosystems which we are very pleased to learn more about.
Julian Kawohl is a Professor for Strategic Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. He is also the founder of the Ecosystemizer framework, a methodology - similar to the Platform Innovation Kit - which helps managers intuitively understand ecosystems, set up ecosystem strategies and position themselves in such ecosystems.
Started in 2018, Evan GmbH is a german tech-start up operating the Evan Network as an enterprise blockchain infrastructure focused on manufacturing companies. With this blockchain technology, Evan provides a base for building trust in digital partner networks as well as enabling corporate solutions for the economy of things.
Thomas Müller, CEO and co-founder of Evan, has spent a long time in the area of digital business and brings a lot of experience in blockchain technologies. That’s why we are very pleased to discuss with him the possibilities of decentralized infrastructure for different business and industry scenarios.
Markus Schorn is a member of the Deutsche Telekom Think Tank with focus on emerging technologies, innovations and business models. Within this role, he asked himself how technologies will impact our future lives and society. His book “10x DNA - Das Mindset der Zukunft”, which he wrote together with Frank Thelen, also revolves around this topic. It’s focusing on the acceleration of the technological process and the upcoming changes but also kind of a “wake-up call” to make sure that we keep up with all the possibilities and novelties which come along with new technologies.
Today, instrafreight is one of the leading platforms for B2B logistics in the european market. With focus on overland freight, instafreight matches the emerging transportation needs of shippers with the transport capacity of the carriers. Started in 2016 they faced an exciting journey from their first MVP to today's platform with about 2000 shippers on the demand side and 25.000 carrier companies on the supply side.
In our conversation with Philipp Ortwein, CEO and Co-Founder, he gave us a lot of insights about the impact of a digital platform approach on a market which is vastly fragmented.
In our conversation with Adrien Nussenbaum, Co-Founder and U.S. CEO of Mirakl, he gave us lots of insights and key success factors regarding the 3 lifestages of a platform, how to set up a platform initiative as an incumbent company and how platforms can create a more sustainable business.
In our newest episode, we talked to Chritian Warneck - VP of Amadeus, the platform to connect the travel ecosystem about the challenges of market entry and intermediation when it comes to building a platform for the travel business. Additionally, we learned a lot about the role of data and AI for todays and the future industry and why it is extremely important to keep innovating as a platform leader.
In our newest episode we talked to Christian Neumann, Managing Director of Tapio, the open ecosystem for the wood industry, about his most important learnings and keys to success when it comes to building an Win-Win-Win ecosystem. Tune-in to learn more why technology is not a key success factor, how to set up the right governance structures and how to enforce sustainability by collaboration and co-creation.
In this conversation we explored together with Simon Tüchelmann, CEO of kreatize, how to platformize manufacturing due to unbundling of production & supply chain capacities. Kreatize is a leading platform and known as the AWS for manufacturing. But not only that it helps companies to build resilient supply chains, it also is a big driver for a more sustainable future. A fantastic conversation and great source of insights for every B2B platform builder.
In our latest conversation with Josef Brunner, CEO of leading IoT platform relayr, we talked about key success factors for building a platform business. And he was clear right from the beginning that it is not about technology, it’s about focusing on outcomes for the customers and to understand market transformations. Only when you understand bigger trends and market shifts you can build a platform business to be ready at the right time at the right market.
Through a conversation with Sebastian Brenner, CEO of CheMondis, we explored how an incumbent company like Lanxess executed a platform strategy and launched the leading B2B platform in the chemical industry .
How to leverage communities to unlock network effects. Through a conversation with Adam Broadway, CEO and co.founder of platformOS, a leading innovation platform, we explore the role and impact of communities on growth and network effects.
In todays episode, Nathalie and myself are welcoming Malte Zur, Managing Director of testxchange.
testXChange is Europes leading marketplace for industrial testings and helps product companies to find providers for testing, inspection and certification services - revolutionizing the testing industry.
There are about 50.000 laboratories in Europe - about 7.000 of them are on the platform
Today we will talk about a special theme “Marketplace enabled SaaS” - so how a marketplace can be a complementary value proposition for SaaS.
We will also go deeper into chicken-egg problem solving for complex services, deeper value propositions then just “matchmaking” as a key for B2B platforms, blockchain and sustainability of course.
Let’s start.
Mercateo is Europe’s largest B2B platform; in this open discussion with Managing Director Lars Schade, we explored how the company unlocks network effects and leverages them to build defensibility against Amazon. Lars also shared with us how he leverages data and product information to give customers the possibility of more sustainable product purchases.