Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c60IR // #c60Synthesis

Networked goods become more valuable as more people use them. The result is “demand-side economies of scale,” giving an advantage to bigger networks.

— In our words · Source: Machine, Platform, Crowd (Andrew McAfee & Erik Brynjolfsson)

[Use when]

When you're sizing up why the biggest platform keeps winning.

[Why it matters]

The flip of industrial economics: advantage goes to the biggest network, not the biggest factory — which is why platforms tip to winner-take-most.

More from Machine, Platform, Crowd

#c50We will try to convince you that because of recent technological changes, companies need to rethink the balance between minds and machines,…When you're deciding where the next dollar of investment goes: mind or machine, product or platform, core or… #c51They found 136 such studies, covering everything from prediction of IQ to diagnosis of heart disease. In 48% of them, there was no…When an expert's gut says one thing and the model says another. #c52There is no controversy in social science that shows such a large body of qualitatively diverse studies coming out so uniformly in the same…When someone defends expert intuition against the data.