Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future

by Andrew McAfee

In all companies and industries, machine, platform, and crowd have counterparts. For machine intelligence, the counterpart is the human mind. Accountants with spreadsheets, engineers with computer-aided design software, and assembly line workers next to robots are all examples of mind-and-machine combinations. The counterparts of platforms are products—in other words, goods and services. A ride across town is a product, while Uber is the platform people use to access it. The same is true with accommodations and Airbnb, or news stories and Facebook. For the crowd, the counterpart is the core: the knowledge, processes, expertise, and capabilities that companies have built up internally and across their supply chains. The core of GE Appliances designs, manufactures, and markets refrigerators and ovens; NASA’s core builds spaceships and tries to better understand our universe; Microsoft’s core capabilities include developing personal computer operating systems and applications.