Leading through platforms

Competing in an era beyond products

By Professor Brian D Smith

This article is the second in a four-part series exploring the strategic concepts that matter most in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous market. Each piece distils a core idea that leaders in pharma, medtech and related sectors must understand to adapt and compete

Life sciences companies swim in a sociological and technological sea where volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are the default conditions for strategising. If, like the allegorical fish, you’re not conscious of your volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, take a look around: development cycles are unpredictable; regulatory expectations shift frequently; and payers’ price sensitivities vary both within and between markets. As the saying goes, if you’re not confused, you’re misinformed.

A salient aspect of today’s VUCA environment is the rise of platform technologies. Their core logic is understandable: if a single technology can generate multiple assets, then it might act as a stabiliser – allowing the oscillations of individual markets to dampen each other, much as oceanic and atmospheric systems do in climate science.
But the truth is more nuanced. Platforms can be powerful sources of competitive advantage, but only when managed with strategic discipline and anchored in customer value. When they are not, they amplify the very volatility they are meant to counter.

‘Platforms can be powerful sources of competitive advantage, but only when managed with strategic discipline and anchored in customer value’

This article makes three, connected points: platform technologies change the economics of how firms create and capture value but they do not change the fundamental rules of strategy and, consequently, they are only a source of advantage if strategists understand how to use them.

This second article in the series explores how platform strategy works in practice, why it is reshaping competition in some parts of our industry but not others, and how strategists can avoid the predictable failure modes that arise when technological enthusiasm outpaces strategic clarity.

A platform is best understood as a technological approach that can be applied repeatedly across multiple assets, indications or use cases. A platform is distinct from a single product, a one-off modality or a clever tool in search of a problem. It is a repeatable system that generates a family of solutions from a shared core. Economists like Bresnahan and Trajtenberg would call it a general-purpose technology. Innovation theorists like Baldwin and Clark would call it a modular architecture. Strategists like Jacobides frame platforms as architectural positions within broader ecosystems that shape how firms create and capture value.

In life sciences, platform logic appears in biological, computational and manufacturing guises. Scientific platforms include mRNA constructs, CRISPR editing systems, ADC linker payload architectures and radiopharmaceutical scaffolds. Computational platforms include multimodal AI discovery engines and large-scale structure-function prediction models.  Manufacturing platforms include viral vector production, lipid nanoparticle formulation and cell processing workflows. These examples have very different technological foundations but they share the same strategic property: they can be used more than once and they get better with use.

‘Platform technologies change the economics of how firms create and capture value but they do not change the fundamental rules of strategy’

Importantly, the platform itself is not a source of value; its customers are. In an economically governed market, payers, clinicians and patients reward meaningful, differentiated outcomes, not technological novelty. A platform is only strategically valuable when it enables a firm to meet customer needs better than rivals, more consistently and at lower marginal cost. Without that, it is simply an elegant piece of science with an inflated budget line.

This distinction becomes even more salient in a VUCA environment. When uncertainty is high, strategists often treat novel technologies as sources of psychological stability and safety. But platform technologies are not sources of certainty; they are sources of optionality. And for optionality to create value, it must be governed with discipline, bounded by strategy and anchored in customer value. Without those guard rails, platforms become expensive distractions that absorb capital, distort portfolio choices and, ultimately, amplify rather than dampen volatility.

In the first article in this series, I described how dynamic capabilities operate through three mechanisms: sensing; seizing and reconfiguring. Platform strategies also operate through three mechanisms: focus; extension and governance.

These mechanisms help us to understand why some firms turn platforms into engines of competitive advantage while others turn them into expensive distractions.

Every platform has a core set of capabilities, assets, data and know-how that make it distinctive. Strategic clarity begins with defining that core and, equally importantly, its boundaries. Without boundaries, platforms become panaceas that absorb every idea and every strategic aspiration.

The platform core is defined by three questions:

• What the platform is (the technological architecture)
• What it is for (the customer problem it solves)
• What it is not (the use cases where it adds no value).

Once the core is defined, strategists must decide where the platform can be applied without distorting the portfolio.

This is where platform strategy intersects with marketing fundamentals. The question is not, ‘Where can we use this technology?’ but, ‘Where does it create superior customer value and competitive advantage?’.

Extension decisions require:

• Understanding the platform’s adjacent uses
• Evaluating the platform’s differentiation potential in each use
• Avoiding the temptation to broaden at the expense of depth.

Platforms require governance that aligns R&D, commercial, regulatory, manufacturing and business development around a shared logic. Without this, platforms fragment into disconnected projects, each pulling the organisation in a different direction.

Effective governance ensures that:

• Investment decisions follow platform logic, not asset logic
• Learning is captured and reused across programmes
• Partnerships strengthen the platform rather than dilute it
• Regulatory interactions accumulate into a coherent evidence base.

Our industry is prone to management fashions. But platform strategy is not a fashion. It is a way of understanding how technologies behave when they have multiple applications, steep learning curves and ecosystem effects. It is a way of making disciplined choices in a business culture and environment where technological enthusiasm can overwhelm strategic clarity. In a VUCA world, platforms are strategic architectures that help firms create repeatability and resilience but only when governed with discipline and customer focus. Technology changes. The rules of strategy don’t.

The series is written by Professor Brian D Smith, a leading authority on strategy in our industry.
He welcomes comments and questions at brian.smith@pragmedic.com