Platforms and Blockchain Will Transform Logistics

by Sangeet Paul Choudary, Marshall W. Van Alstyne and Geoffrey G. Parker

June 19, 2019

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Summary.

Major change is coming to the logistics and shipping industries – a transformation that promises to be even more dramatic than the move to third-party logistics a generation ago. With increasing digitization, platform-based business models will connect new players, wash away inefficient old ones, and harness the cloud.

Sangeet Paul Choudary is a C-level advisor on AI and platform strategy; a senior fellow at the University of California, Berkeley; and a four-time HBR 10 Must Reads author. He is a recipient of the 2025 Thinkers50 Strategy Award for his book Reshuffle, on the economic impact of AI.

Marshall W. Van Alstyne is the Allen & Kelli Questrom Professor of Information Economics at Boston University.

@InfoEcon

Geoffrey G. Parker (gparker@dartmouth.edu) is a professor of engineering at Dartmouth College and a research fellow at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. He coauthored Platform Revolution (W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), the April 2016 HBR article “Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy,” and the October 2006 HBR article “Strategies for Two-Sided Markets,” an HBR all-time top 50.

@g2parker

Platforms and Blockchain Will Transform Logistics

Summary.

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