Nike wants to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. The company creates products, services and experiences. Nike focuses on the future by constantly innovating using the statement ‘beating yourself is a never-ending commitment’. This ensures that Nike survives in an ever-changing economy.
In 2012, Nike introduced the revolutionary Nike+ FuelBand, a wearable device to measure movement and different activities, and from that moment the customer tech and fitness industry was born.
However, in 2015, the Apple Watch was introduced by Apple and Nike became a third-party application on this Apple device.
Nike decided to focus again on fitness data platforms with communities, like Nike+ and NikeFuel. NikeFuel makes it possible to calculate activity, compare and compete with friends or other Nike+ members and become more motivated. Nike+ is the overall account for the applications, services and website of Nike with 30 million members. Both platforms provide connection and social interaction between users.
Nike strongly believes in the power of collaboration and therefore the company has recently started with organizing hackathons. Nike makes platforms available for developers and provides them with all data gathered by Nike for self-created applications.
Nike also launched Nike+ Fuel Lab, a partnership program to collaborate with industry leading companies and to use emerging technologies to create innovative solutions. A platform that is more open and free is more likely to grow and connects users with your business to establish co-creation. The more people are connected to a platform, like NikeFuel or Nike+, the bigger the community and the higher the value of the platform. The value for users, for example developers and suppliers, depends on the number of other platform users, for example Nike customers.
Through hackathons, the Nike+ Fuel Lab and partnerships with other fitness tracking technologies, Nike’s applications integrate with more partner devices, applications and fitness equipment. It can be concluded that Nike developed itself as a real platform business.
What do you think will be the future of Nike as a platform business?
Sources:
Li, T. (2016) ‘Platform Mediated Networks’, Information Strategy Session 4, Rotterdam (26th of September 2016)
http://digiday.com/platforms/sxsw-why-nike-is-a-tech-company/
http://fortune.com/2016/04/10/nike-platform-business-book-excerpt/
http://www.wareable.com/nike/not-so-happy-birthday-nike-fuelband-2351
