Leveraging Multi-sided Platforms with AI for Business Leaders

Artificial intelligence has massively disrupted the business world. While artificial intelligence can make employees more productive, cutting costs, it is as yet unclear how AI will generate revenue. One of the leading possibilities is that AI will make multi-sided platforms better able to match buyers and sellers, making them more useful to consumers and thus more valuable to investors.

This program will delve deeply into the impact of artificial intelligence on platforms, along with briefer visits to other potential revenue models for AI in both current and future scenarios. This includes Web3 contexts where decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), powered by blockchain, smart contracts, and artificial intelligence, perform many of the functions of traditional businesses at a fraction of the price.

Because this program delves into artificial intelligence and multi-sided platforms, it will provide content and skills for people who seek to learn more about either — or both — of these core business topics. The sessions assume no prior knowledge of either AI technology nor business model design.

Participants in this interactive program will gain critical insights from detailed case studies created by industry experts and successful innovators. They will develop an in-depth understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, benefits, and consequences of this innovative business model for the different stakeholders in a platform’s ecosystem.

Program Benefits

• Learn the theories and examples of the key principles of revenue generation with AI
• Develop the skills you need to design and analyze multi-sided platform businesses
• Identify the optimal route to test, launch, and grow a new revenue model
• Prepare your business to face competition from AI-powered platform companies and from Web3-powered decentralized entities
• Predict the future of industries and markets as AI and platforms continue to expand globally
• Earn a Certificate of Participation from the Harvard Division of Continuing Education

Topics Covered

• The power, limits, and trajectory of AI as a revenue generation engine
• Key functions that every platform must perform to attract and serve customers, including assumptions, goals, constraints, and data that most platform managers encounter
• Types and implications of “network effects”, where the value for each user on the platform or using an AI engine is directly related to the number of other users
• Counterstrategies that traditional, non-platform companies might employ to thwart the arrival of competition from platforms

Format

The interactive online sessions will be a mix of small group exercises, plenary debates, and simulations.

Participants will prepare for each online session by watching pre-recorded lectures and interviews highlighting one or more case studies with platform founders. These videos must be previewed prior to the online sessions.

Who Should Enroll

This program is intended for entrepreneurs and managers who seek to understand the drivers underneath the next big waves in the evolution of business: artificial intelligence and multi-sided platforms. This includes strategists and product developers who seek to innovate business offerings, as well as technologists, investors, and marketers who are building, funding, and selling these offerings.