Assignment Question:
A. YOUR TASK
Drawing on appropriate academic and practitioner literature, you should choose an industry or organisation where incumbents are facing disruption from digital platforms. Here are some examples across multiple sectors, please try and find your own idea within your area of experience, originality will be rewarded:
Asda tyres / Blackcircles.com vs. Tyre retailers
Banks vs Fintech lenders (eg.Kickstarter, fanbacked.com)
Insurtech vs traditional insurance firms
Universities vs Coursera
Driverless cars vs chauffeurs
Tom Tom satnavs vs Google maps
Party gaming vs casinos
Health clinics vs Fitbit
Spotify vs broadcast radio
Netflix vs movie theatres
Tinder online dating vs singles bars
rover.com vs dog boarding kennels
tyde.co vs traditional funeral firms
Upwork / taskrabbit vs temping agencies
Etc. etc.
Guidelines
Working individually, you should prepare an academic paper of maximum length 3500 words excluding references – 10% margin e.g. 3150 – 3850 words. By way of guidance, a typical approach would contain :
Identification of the organisation(s) or industry under disruption. You can choose a broad industry focus involving large players (eg..Alibaba, AirBnB) but be careful as this is quite hackneyed and originality may be a problem. You could trace the history of the development of a successful platform (eg. Headspace.com, upwork.com), a failed platform endeavour (eg. Sidecar, Uber / EBay in China). Alternatively, you could draw on your own experience of potential or ongoing disruption from platform businesses in a sector or industry where you have worked (eg. Tyde.co vs. incumbent funeral firms; insurtech vs. incumbent insurance companies; Asda tyres vs. incumbent tyre dealers).
Using appropriate conceptual frameworks, identify the before and after state
explaining the disruptive effect of technology
Critically analyse the strategies of the disrupter(s)? Refer to the principles of platform design from the course book eg. How the platform owners managed network effects, how they overcame the chicken / egg problem and how did they decide on platform monetisation?
Analyse the response strategies of the incumbents vs the disrupters
Identify the ongoing repercussions of the disruption on the stakeholders (negative / positive) including social responsibility
