Strategies for Designing and Growing Business-to-Business Platforms

Can business-to-business (B2B) platforms copy the proven strategy playbooks from the consumer sector? Yes and no. In B2B, platforms apply specific strategies to overcome growth-limiting circumstances, like heterogeneity among ex-ante relationships between a limited number of potential users. This means that they weigh up the interests of individual user groups and allow for greater diversity of interactions. Based on an extensive study of six German B2B platforms, we identified three strategic initiatives that extend the consumer-oriented (X2C) playbook: embracing intermediaries, building trust, and embedding across multiple sides. We provide three actionable principles practitioners can apply to build B2B platforms.