Designing and Operating Multisided Platforms

Marketplaces and multisided platforms have emerged as powerful intermediaries in delivering value to customers. Managing such platforms presents unique challenges, particularly because the stakeholders transacting across multiple sides are not employees of the platform. Platform operators must orchestrate interactions, enable trust, and generate actionable insights across diverse participant groups.

A defining feature of these markets is the need to coordinate large numbers of individuals and businesses with varying needs, capabilities, and motivations. Rather than adopting a traditional “Command and Control” approach, managers must embrace a “Coordinate and Cultivate” orientation to build sustainable and scalable platforms.

This Programme will highlight different kinds of roles that the platform operator performs as an intermediary, the value created by a middleman matchmaker, the challenges in growing the platform, disintermediation, competition between platforms and pipelines etc. The role of the coordinator potentially allows access to sensitive information about individuals and hence there are needs for designing safeguards and self-regulation for sustainability of the business model.

This Executive Education programme is based on a popular PGP elective offered by Professor Saral Mukherjee titled “Marketplaces and Platforms: Gaining Insights, Orchestrating Interactions”. The programme contents would cover the following topics:

This programme aims to:

The programme will be delivered primarily through case study discussions, enabling participants to engage deeply with real-world platform challenges and strategic decision-making scenarios.

This programme is designed for: