"Tech companies like to boast of their life-changing products and mind-blowing innovations, but the word that most defines the industry’s boom over the past two decades is more mundane. 'Platform,'" reports The Wall Street Journal. ...

..."For most of their history, the tech companies were so focused on the challenges of fast growth that tending to what was on their platforms wasn’t as urgent, says Geoffrey Parker, a Dartmouth professor of engineering and co-author of a book about the rise of such businesses called 'Platform Revolution.'

'Now,' he says, 'it’s exploding in their face.'"