Why do certain types of companies, goods, services survive and others do not. Why does one set continuously reinvent themselves and others wither away and die? Why does Cisco continue to provide exciting and innovative networking products, while companies like Cabletron die? Several academics believe that a dominant factor is that winners are able to create robust and effective product platforms. These platforms are able to cater to changing customer needs. On the winning side, the platform leader is effectively able to manage the various conflicts that are present in the platform ecosystem. On the loosing team, often there is no platform leader!I believe that effective platform leadership, platform architecture play a key role in product success.In this thesis, I plan to compare two large platforms. These are the IPTV platform and the conventional cable based TV platform. Both are competing with each other to provide similar services to the same customer set. I have coined the term 'Mega Platform" to describe such large platforms. . As part of this comparison I will develop a set of metrics or comparison points which will help compare the two competing platforms. Please note that the purpose of this thesis is not to prove that there is a strong correlation between platform success and market success.
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