Rapid Platform Exploration – A Sprint to Discover and Design Digital Platform Business Models

In recent years, the significance of digital platform business models has been increasing. This growth creates an increasing demand for tools that companies and startups can apply to find and develop sustainable platform business models. Today, various platform design tools are available to help companies and startups in the platform development. Previous research by Brecht et al. (2021) on the validation of platform business models has provided methods requiring, amongst others, a discovered and verified business model. However, there is a lack of research in establishing guidelines on how to reach this verified state. By applying the Google Sprint, a popular method to quickly generate insights into a variety of problems and enriching it with platform design tools, this research creates the Smart Platform Design Sprint (SPDS). The SPDS provides a solution to discover and obtain a verified business model. Its novelty lies in incurring the speed of the Google Sprint and incorporating the expertise of platform design tools. Through a series of expert interviews, the SPDS is improved, and its necessity verified. In future research, the SPDS awaits application in a practical setting showing its feasibility. Keywords: platform design tools, business model, exploration, google sprint, smart platform experiment cycle