Business Platforms, Digital Platforms and Digital Innovation: An Executive Agenda is the second book of the authors' three book series on digitalization management.

The first book in the series, No Excuses: Realizing Promised Benefits from Digitization, describes how to build compelling business cases for digitalzation projects, as well as how to manage these projects to fully realize a project's promised benefits.

Competitive success is increasingly dependent on organizations' capabilities to simultaneously exploit their installed business platforms and undertake digital innovation. examines the challenges that arise in doing so by covering four interrelated topics:

* The nature and competitive roles of (digitized) business platforms and of the digital platforms enabling these business platforms.
* The advantages and disadvantages of designing and implementing business platforms and digital platforms as global platforms and as local platforms.
* The differential effects of global and local platforms on digital innovation.
* Managing the tensions that inevitably arise as organizations strive to achieve an optimal balance across their global and local platforms.

The book should benefit readers having responsibilities associated with designing, building or managing business platforms and/or digital platforms, as well as readers having responsibilities associated with assessing whether an implemented platform continues to effectively serve its intended purposes.

The first half of the book examines the nature and competitive roles of business platforms and digital platforms. The second half of the book describes strategies and tactics being taken by leading organizations in achieving an optimal balance with their global and local platforms. The book concludes with five mandates for executive action. The book's chapters are:

* Chapter 1: A Perpetual Balancing Act
* Chapter 2: Business Processes
* Chapter 3: Business Platforms
* Chapter 4: Enterprise Resource Planning Systems
* Chapter 5: Digital Platforms
* Chapter 6: Platform Management Challenges
* Chapter 7: Enterprise Architecture
* Chapter 8: Positioning the Corporate IT Function
* Chapter 9: Digitization Governance Systems
* Chapter 10: Mandates for Executive Action