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We can consider MYBS as a multisided platform, because as Evans (2011) explains, a business opportunity emerges for a multi-sided platform when three conditions are met:
1. There are distinct groups of customers, which in the case of MYBS are the students looking for a master, the institutions that offer them and the companies that advertise.
2. A member of one group benefits from having his demand coordinated with one or more members of another group (i.e., there are indirect, or cross-side, network effects). In this case, the students benefit when there are more universities and information about masters involved and the institutions directly benefit from more student consulting the site where their masters are displayed. The same occurs for the advertisers that increase their benefits when more students make use of the website and vice versa. Also, if the web site achieves a great number of consumers from the student group to access the site, that promotes a direct competition among the educational institutions that will seek to improve their masters’ quality and will offer better price deals.
3. An intermediary can facilitate that coordination more efficiently than bilateral relationships between the members of the groups. This is a perfect description of the main function of this website, because it was created precisely for avoiding the cost of searching for the same information in the thousands of different institution’s web sites, and making it easier for the students to compare and contrast the different masters available.
On the other hand, there are more sides that MYBS could bring on board, like for example head hunters, and human resource departments looking for employees. This platform would give them the perfect information about which master fits better for the job they need to fulfill and it provides specific and useful information like alumni experience, and educational institutions’ prestige, while they could also share with other companies their own experience on hiring someone with certain master.
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Like mentioned in some comments, MYBS is a multisided platform due to services offered by this website which creates value (by reducing searching costs) by enabling interaction between students and business schools. Indeed, students and business schools are connected via this website.
MYBS allows students to have access to key information about masters offered by top business schools in Europe. Moreover, it helps top business schools to reach more easily students due to the centralization function offered by this website.
Therefore, the three conditions described in one article of this blog* are met:
– There is distinct groups of customers: students and top business schools/association (like CEMS).
– The presence of positive cross-side network effects. Indeed, students are attracted by the number of top business schools and business schools are attracted by the potentially huge number of students sensitive to the quality of information about masters.
– There is an intermediary that facilitates interaction between students and business schools: MYBS.
Another point I would like to mention is about governance rules. Indeed, one governance rule of MYBS is to deal only with business schools that offer masters which are ranked by the Financial Times in the top 70 of Europe. We could incur 2 rules: on one hand, MYBS deals only with business schools and on the other hand, these business schools should offer masters which are ranked by the Financial Times in the top 70 of Europe. Moreover, concerning interaction, users should be connected to contact alumni and to use some features like adding a master in favorites.
Reference
http://www.ipdigit.eu/2014/03/what-drives-self-regulation-in-the-nascent-p2p-ride-sharing-industry/
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Multisided platforms coordinate the demand of distinct groups of customers who need each other in some way. Thus, MYBS can be a multisided platform, because it has several different groups in this platform. In this platform it has three different groups: one is searchers those who want take master course in the future, other is alumni or current students, another is school. These three groups bring an indirect network effects because of using MYBS.
The feature of MYBS is that searcher through different choice (major, fee, duration, country) to find the specific information of the most matched school, if you want know it more, you can contact with current students by this platform. It also has a rank of schools with the specific information (including duration, location, and fee), so it benefits searchers to find useful information quickly. So these three groups have indirect network effect, searchers want to find schools, and schools can benefit from searchers to attract more students to their schools. So in this case schools support this platform, because they can raise awareness and advertised their schools, this can bring a lot of profits to them. So I supposed these schools pay money to this platform each year, so this platform can use free by users and provide a rank list of these schools.
I think a platform such as MYBS will has bright prospects. Because this multisided platform is more efficient, a member of one group benefits from having his demand coordinated with one or more members of another group, and also can save time as well as cost. It also brings profits to platform itself. So the multisided platform will have a win-win outcome.
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MYBS (Mind Your own Business School) is a multisided platform in the sense that it make matching between searchers and providers of academic business programs at an international scale. Thus, any potential students looking for that kind of studies can use the browser to find the best answer to the characteristics he is looking for. On the other hand, it allows universities to reach a larger public of potential students. Biggest universities are favoured thanks to their ranking compared with the smallest ones and those last benefit of the visibility of the biggest. So both of them are winning. Also, more partnership has the platform, more partners will reach the network. In this way, we can see how the system is a multisided platform as how it can obtain network effects.
Concerning the sides that MYBS brought and could bring on board, I think the managers have to be careful of what they do. The obvious answer concerning the sides they might bring on board is advertisers and recruiters. But these participants could create some kind of bias. They could promote some way of acting and so influence the searchers or providers. Both of them will be reluctant to use the browser in the presence of such actors.
Following this reasoning, I think the way they used to finance the platform is the “less worst”. As they depend of the platform actors, some bias could be created but be subsided by the universities is maybe the more objective way to do so. To improve their situation, they have to be financial partners of a larger range of universities rather than a few, reducing the dependence link. An other way to be financed could be to take a commission when a matching between universities and students occurs but I don’t think such a system could be established. People will find their needs thanks to the browser and then use an other path to contact the university and so avoid the MYBS fee.
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The main functionalities and features of the platform are quite simple. Any person searching for information about a master in a business school around the world can come on the website as they would do on a classical search engine. Different tools are on the home page to find the master we are interested in or the universities and their masters. Once we chose a master in a special university, we have all the information needed in order to learn more about it and to apply. This easy access is mend to attract the users and give the information as fast as possible. On the top, there is a banner with facebook and linkedIn tabs in orther to make the community growth.
To understand why MYBS is a multisided platform, we need to check if the platform meets all the criteria needed. First, we need “distinct groups of customers”. This condition is obviously met because we have students looking for a master and Universities looking for interested students. Then, we need that “A member of one group benefits from having his demand coordinated with one or more members of another group”. Here again the condition is met because more students on the platform brings more incentive for universities. The last condition is that “an intermediary can facilitate that coordination more efficiently than bilateral relationships between the members of the groups. The platform meets this condition because it makes the communication easier between students (searching for masters) and universities (searching for students)
Finnaly, concerning the price structure, we can easily suppose that universities represent the incomes for the platform. Indeed, students are very price sensitive (they are not willing to pay in order to find a master). We can see that by surfing on the website: we are never asked to pay for some information. On the opposite, universities pay already to make their master known thanks to other channels (e.g SIEP or others events) and with this site they can improve their scope so they are willing to pay to be referenced on the website.
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The first basic question that any MSP executives should ask themselves is: How many sides must bring aboard our platform? In some cases, the answer is obvious and limited by the choice of the industry, for example, eBay did not have to think much before identifying buyers and sellers as their relevant sides.
In the personal computer industry, Microsoft uses Windows as three-sided platform connecting users, developers of applications and hardware manufacturers.
The platform needs to attract and serve all groups simultaneously to add value to the company/platform. And the platform only has value to a particular group of users to the other groups having many users. For example, a video game console will only attract buyers if you have enough games available for purchase. However, game developers will only develop for a given console if it has enough players who already use.
One way to solve this problem is subsidizing one of the segments of customers to attract them by offering free or reduced plans. Although, other difficulties are added: Choose which side support, and what the correct strategy to adopt to attract grant clients. Overcoming, this problem is a major challenge for many MSPs.
MYBS has the potential to become a large and relatively powerful incentive to share certain factors and situations. This platform (generally with two sides) creates value for itself and for their users when there are more students interested in joining the platform as well as entities that aim to promote their products (in this case will be masters, for example). Since this same platform creates value for itself and for users as they arise other new users whether on the side of “supply” side whether the “demand” is created in this way an effect of scale as it will record this new users whether on one side or the other, thus contributing to the development of the platform.
In other words, this platform promotes interaction between students and ex-students of business schools with the goal of promoting opportunities academically. These opportunities can be sought by both parties through a “filtering” of data that has information of the price of institution, country, specific area of training, etc. By this way, it is easier to search and find the right business school taking into account all the information provided by both sides.
In addition to the sources of revenue coming from advertisers and platform universities, the ranking of Financial Times is an important data which is able to compare business schools based in their own criteria. The only negative factor is the quality of information, ie , the fact that users have the privilege to comment and share this information with other users can be good if the information is reliable, but can also be bad if the information is not quality.
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MYBS brings together students who is looking for the business school and the school information platform together. The more students are looking for the business application information and register on this website, the more business school want to put information and make public advertising on this platform. Meanwhile in the same way, the more information provided by MYBS, more students will be attract to register and log in on this website. The way of working method could be considered to be the multisided platform which bring two different groups together and interaction these interdependent groups. Participation on one side of the platform effectively determines the quality of the other side. Therefore, the platform internalizes network effects to marginal rather than average participating users.
The same network function also can be found on scholars4dev website (http://www.scholars4dev.com/) which provide master and PHD scholarship information for students. On this website we can find they put some advertising for some trivial agency and universities. Another multisided platform website named Graduateland (http://graduateland.com/) which is put internship, professional career and job information for the graduate students.
The profits of these multisided website almost from the advertising income and charge fee from users. For instance, several travel agency advertising can be found on scholars4dev website. Graduateland charge for the employers who want to public their recruitment information on their website, free for first 10 days, and 260 Euro/30 days for basic information publish and 520 Euro/ 30 days for detail information publish.
There is no accurate data from these multisided platform relate to the method of setting their service price for users. However, the paper written by E. GLEN WEYL which named A Price Theory of Multi-Sided Platforms (2009) (http://home.uchicago.edu/weyl/ptNsms_FINAL.pdf) analysis some basic ideas of multisided platform price. The price of their service depending on their network effect. Users on each side interact with random subset users on the other side and the user values are affine in the number of other side’s users. Finally, users on each side of the platform are of equal value to those on the other side. For instance, advertising on the website could gain from readers viewing while other readers dislike them. Readers usually read all application and recruitment information which provide by website and random selection of advertising. It seems difficult to charge users or advertisers based on the number of advertising view. The author use RT2006 model and work out that if user utility is not affine, platforms may use a marginal price, such as differential charges for viewing certain websites, to discriminate among users. In this case social value and profits depend not only on participation rates, but also marginal prices. While platforms do internalize externalizes, they do so imperfectly as they take into account only the preferences of marginal users.
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MYBS can be described as a multi-sided platform because this web page met the three conditions explained by Evans (2011) seen in the post “What drives self-regulation in the nascent P2P “ride-sharing” industry?” (http://www.ipdigit.eu/2014/03/what-drives-self-regulation-in-the-nascent-p2p-ride-sharing-industry/). First a multi-sided platform has to bring together distinct groups of costumers, in the specif case of MYBS two groups of costumers can be identified, the students looking Masters and the Business Schools that offer Masters. In second place in this two-sided platform the students benefit from being linked with a large group of Business Schools, they have more options to choose and as seen in the Network effects post (http://www.ipdigit.eu/2012/02/network-effects/) “Users prefer to be connected to a bigger network than to a smaller one”. Therefore MYBS meets the second criterion. Finally a multi-sided platform has to coordinate the connection between the groups more effectively than if it were a bilateral relationship, MYBS meets this condition because allows the students to compare between different Business schools all in the same page, also permits the students select different categories, languages, countries, etc. So they can find the more adequate School for each person.
This is also how this web site facilitate the interaction among the members of the various sides, as seen in the MYBS site “Searching this preference in the extensive offer currently existing is like searching a needle in a haystack. We help you by adding specific and relevant search criteria and help you to easily access all the necessary information”;
Also all the information available comes directly from the Business schools and the rankings from the Financial Times, this makes the information trustworthy and this helps the students find quality Masters. As we can see this website facilitates the search for the students and facilitates the applications for them to, this makes getting more applicants easier for Business schools.
There are similar platforms competing with MYBS, on offline example would be the many Business Schools fairs realized all over the world. An on line example of a similar platform would be the site “Best Masters” (http://www.best-masters.com/) which focuses focuses on giving the students the necessary tool to navigate trough the best global education opportunities and help them make the right decision according their interests.
This to example are similar to MYBS because they focus on the same groups, the students and the Universities.
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MYBS is a multisided platform because it facilitates interactions between different groups. It creates value by reducing search costs for participants and by gathering a large number of users. The more participants join the website, the more value it creates by matching demand for both sides [Eisenmann et al. (2006)]. In this particular case, the main sides are the future master students, the alumni and the Universities offering a master program.
MYBS could have brought on board other sides such as advertisers or recruiters. Advertisers could allow the intermediary (MYBS) to make money. However, the real value of the platform is its reputation and advertising could make it less “professional”. Recruiters could be added to the platform and be interesting for students to interact with. Students are probably looking for a good formation to be able to find a good job afterward. So adding recruiters can attract even more students and add value. But MYBS proposes masters all over the world and it can be hard to organize a recruitment network at this scale.
For what concerns the price structure, MYBS has chosen to subsidize on side, the future master students. Of course, the two sides attract each other, but students looking for a master degree are probably more price sensitive. The main goal is to create cross-side network effect. We can easily see that universities are the “money side” because some of them are partners of MYBS. These partners pay to be present on the website and to have a privileged place.
Reputation is very important for MYBS and drives the need for a good regulating access. As said by Boudreau and Hagiu (2009), “Brand name and reputation are widely accepted as the key drivers of business school’s success”. Students are looking for good universities and in turn take part in this reputation (when they enter the university). It represents the same ‘chicken-and egg’ problem faced to participate in the platform and explains why governance rules are important. There is for instance a need for information quality (ex: verification of alumni’s testimonies, update of university rankings, etc).
References:
Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., and Van Alstyne, M., (2006), Strategies for two-sided markets, Harvard Business Review, 84(10), pp. 92-101.
Boudreau, K and Hagiu, A. (2009). Platforms rules: multi-sided platforms as regulators, pp.163-191.
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In order of becoming a multisided platform, and according to Evans (2011), MYBS must meet three criteria. On the one hand, there must be a distinct group of customers, which MYBS has, since we have the students willing to look for their masters, and the business schools interested on these students. On the other hand, the bigger the amount of students, the better for the business schools looking for them to apply to their own program, and the bigger the amount of masters, the better for the students, as they want to have a broad picture of all the possible programs offered, and choose from the biggest number possible of masters. This shows clearly a network effect, as described by professor Belleflamme on http://www.ipdigit.eu/2012/02/network-effects/ : “for many reasons, users prefer to be connected to a bigger network than to a smaller one”. Finally, the third criteria dictates that “An intermediary can facilitate that coordination more efficiently than bilateral relationships between the members of the groups.” (http://www.ipdigit.eu/2014/03/what-drives-self-regulation-in-the-nascent-p2p-ride-sharing-industry/), and this is rather the case for MYBS: they are succesful on providing a link between each business school and the decision making student, by providing them with the possibility of comparing the latter’s own tastes and ambitions for the program, with the offer of each masters, and linking the ones that prove to be most similiar, a comparison and match up that would have been much more ardous if it had to come for each student to look at each business school by separate and finally doing a round up of their prefered ones, and for each masters program to be able to reach every student one by one and presenting their offers.
In the future, MYBS could bring other sides, or players, into their own platform. A perfect example would be broadening their spectrum to not only masters programs, but to whole faculties and universities with different careers, and thus also expanding the fronteers of students that use their own webpage. Of course the benefits are explicit: a student that wants to undergo a masters program or a whole career, now has a place to search for any which one , and know which one suits their interests the best. The universities /business schools are still winning, since they now will have an even more boradened portfolio of students that might be interested in their own institute.
But we might add that there is a big drawback that might arise from this expansion, and that would be loosing the exclusivity and fame that being a great webpage to match students with their “costum taylored” masters program, since the expansion might disencourage students looking only for a masters program in business: a broadened catalogue may be seen as a less formal or informed site.
The main functionalities of the webpage are clear for both parties: provinding a comparison type of search by cross matching the conditions set by the student with the information provided by each business school. But rather than being a platform that only deals with the geographical position of the masters program (just like http://www.tumaster.com/) , it has many different features, as fees and duration of the programs, and this in turn results in a much better software all in all.
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MYBS is indeed a multisided platform where current or future students and alumni can interact together about studies and business school. The platform also brings on board universities and advertisers. That allows to students to reduce their searching costs and to have some advice to make their choice of the business school. Moreover, a ranking of the business school from the Financial Times is available as well as a lot of pertinent information about universities.
On one side, students are seeking for useful information on business schools and studies. They can make the research easier by choosing different criteria as the fee, the country, the language of studies… On the other side, business schools (and alumni representing their university and their master) can present their programs and advertise opportunities that they can offer to potential students.
The price structure chosen by the website is likely supported and financed by some universities. Indeed, potential students and visitors don’t pay anything for their research and partners of the website are presented at the bottom of the webpage. However, a fear could be that the partner business school would have an advantageous position for a student’s research.
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According to Evans (2011) a two-sided (or multi-sided) platform meets three conditions, while listing them I’ll try to demonstrate that MYBS is indeed a multi-sided platform. First of all there should be “distinct groups of customers”, which there are. On the one hand there are of course the students, and on the other hand you got the schools. Next “a member of one group benefits from having his demand coordinated with one or more members of another group”. This is also the case with MYBS; students obviously prefer to find the right school for them to complete their master’s degree and schools are better off with a higher demand from motivated students. Finally “an intermediary can facilitate that coordination more efficiently than bilateral relationships between the members of the group” applies to MYBS. The website indeed facilitates the search for a master program. And it’s easier for a school to promote itself and to reach students on a website like this where people are actually looking for this kind of advertisement.
There aren’t a lot of websites similar to MYBS, so the idea is not very popular yet. But I could manage to find a one in the US that also offers information about schools where you can complete a master that matches your preferences, http://www.petersons.com. Just like Mind Your own Business School it works through a search term to find schools that match this word. But it does more than just find the right school that suits you the best; it also provides information about the master program and how to get in. Listing the main functionalities of petersons.com off their website: “Searches for popular master’s programs, Considering a master’s program and Getting into your master’s program choice”. Unfortunately it only targets schools in the USA, while MYBS is mainly about European schools. Combining, by an acquisition or fusion, could create an even better website for people all over the world.
In the future those websites should become more and more popular. People are willing to pay professionals for some advice about which studies are best suited for them. If you could find similar information online student will probably first check MYBS’s advice. I’ve got high hopes for this website because we live in a society where there is more and more freedom, where teenagers are given more freedom about their choice of studies. This choice is often hard, definitely at a young age, so checking online for help is reflex they will get for sure.
To help this website really take off, promotion should also be the other way around, all schools on the list should also promote MYBS on their website as a tool to help future students decide.
References:
Multi-sided platform;
Evans, David S. ed. (2011). Platform Economics: Essays on Multi-Sided Businesses. Competition Policy International (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1974020)
Petersons;
http://www.petersons.com/graduate-schools/master-degree.aspx
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As we can see MYBS, is a multisided platform. We have two sides working for one same propose, find the best business school for each other. On one side we can see the alumni community or the master studens of each university. And on the other side, students that are looking for a business school to study, according their needs. In this platform the future students of a master can check all the possibilities that they have and make also their restrictions (country, fees, language and duration) for a better research. This type of platform is very useful for who are looking for a business school to make their master because this is a hard word, it should search in all universities, which courses, the fees, information about the school, how to apply etc. and with this platform is easy to find a good option for each other with all necessary information. The future students can also contact with the alumni to share some opinions about the school and help them to make a better decision.
According to price structure we can say that platform is supported by advertising. The universities have the incentive to put their logo on the platform to be more attractive and then they pay to be visible. On the other side the students that are looking for a university don’t have to pay to benefit from the service.
Another thing to keep in mind is the reliability of the information, because although the information be taken from the Financial Times ranking (as mentioned in other comments) the information provided by alumni and the partner universities can be skewed for your own benefit, not showing a clear picture of reality.
I found another platform, this platform http://business-schools.webometrics.info/en can help students to find a good business school also but it has not the same good and strutured information than MYBS. This platform just inform about the ranking of the universities and the rest of the information will have to be the student to search.
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To be considered as a multi-sided platform, such website should meet three specific criteria that are: bringing together two different types of agents, presence of network effects and existence of an intermediary facilitating the coordination between agents.
Let’s analyze if the website meets these criteria. First of all, on the one hand, MYBS gathers universities that wish to offer their services to students. To attract students, they will diversify the courses that are given and will strive for improving their quality. On the other hand, it gathers students who are willing to attend specific courses to educate themselves. Thus, we have two distinct groups of consumers.
Furthermore, students will have to make choice between universities depending on their preferences, quality and costs. However, many students are not aware of characteristics of universities such as fields of expertise, specificities, etc. and especially from foreign universities. Thus, as they will be willing to know as much as possible on the diverse possibilities, the more universities would register on the website, the more students would be attracted by MYBS. Thus, there is well existence of network effects.
Finally, by providing lot of information about many existing universities, this would enable students to reduce their searching costs. Indeed, rather than looking up on each university’s website, students could concentrate their research on one simple online platform providing them with most important features of each school.
Therefore, the MYBS website would definitely consists in some multi-sided platform.
In the case of multi-sided networks, it is a real challenge to set prices for the different groups of agents. Indeed, groups have diverse willingness-to-pay that the firm has to take into account. On the one hand, there is the “subsidy side”, which is a group of users who must be numerous to attract the other group, the “money side”. [1] The more users from the subsidy side, the higher the valuation from the money side. As the presence of such users is essential to the attractiveness of the platform (via network effects), its developer will set a sufficiently low price to catch as many as possible. It does so because the “money side” users are willing to pay much more for the service once they are satisfied with the quantity of other side users. Regarding MYBS, we directly notice that the simple users might start freely their search for the various masters offered by universities. Thus, students can be considered as the “subsidy side” as their use of the platform is free of charge. This means that MYBS aims at attracting as many students as possible by being free whereas we can assume that universities have to pay for being registered on the website. Consequently, the price charged to universities will cover the subsidy granted to students.
[1] Eisenmann, T., Parker, G., and Van Alstyne, M., (2006), Strategies for two-sided markets, Harvard Business Review, 84(10), pp. 92-101.
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MYBS is a multisided platform, which brings at least two sides, business school side and student side, together. MYBS creates value by reducing searching costs for both sides. One side can benefit from the increase in the number of participants of the other side. Moreover, since those two sides are interdependent, the increase of participants from one side can also attract more participants from the other side join the platform, which leads to a “Positive feedback loop”. Both sides will benefit from the “Network effects”.
I think there might be other sides that MYBS could bring on board.For example: some advertisers. Except master programs of business schools, study abroad organizations may provide foreign students chances to study in Europe. On the other hand, organizations can also provide European undergraduates chances to study overseas. So they might also benefit from this platform. Though maybe what they do has a substitute effect of the platform to some degree, but those organizations do have incentive to get on board and the platform also will benefit from that.
By doing so, more sides on board will lead to potentially larger cross-side network effects. Thus the platform may benefit from diversified sources of revenues, which in this case, more revenues from advertising solutions.
However, getting more sides on board may increase the complexity. Like I said before, some services provided by study aboard organization may be a substitute for the service provided for students by the platform. So it may rise conflicts of the interest.
Adding a new side may lead to failure to meet heterogeneous needs as well as to introduce groundbreaking features of the platform. Apple is able to provide higher quality of hardware-software system compared with Windows from Microsoft. I think part of the reason is that Apple limit the number of sides on board.
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My understanding is that the platform has been developed by Belgian students that were willing to share the experience they had had with their application processes at several Business schools across Europe. Students that are looking at which Master degree would best fit them can go on the platform and search about information such as cost of living, duration, rankings, etc. You can also get the data of some alumni or current student ambassadors if you wish to contact them for deeper insights. I believe that Mind Your Own Business School can be seen as a multisided platform for multiple reasons. It does involve more than one group of consumers. In this case we can identify, on the one hand, potential students looking for a Master degree and, on the other hand, schools willing to recruit students and make a name for themselves. Another group can also be identified: that would be the alumni or the current students that wish to advertise their school. For having done some research back when I was in my Bachelor degree, I can certify that finding practical and useful information about Master degree is no easy task. Obviously there are websites or rankings, but finding people who have actually taken part to it and can give insights is something I would like to have had. This is what this platform aims at: providing the possibility to contact alumni/students in an informal way through LinkedIn or Facebook. So if we look at the definition, MYBS does fulfill the conditions to be classified as multisided platform since it coordinates the demand of different groups. We also have to address the question of which side of the platform will be most interested in taking part to such activities, which one will pull the other side. I feel that since it requires minimal efforts and, I believe, costs from the universities, they will be quite interested in taking part to this initiative. It will thus be interesting for students to join. Their current Business Model, if I understood it well, is to make schools pay to appear on top of the results list or to have their logo on the home page and on the right side of the results list. So basically, advertising space. Everyone knows that in order to have any interest in putting their logo on the page, schools must make certain that people, and in this case more precisely students, will actually come on the webpage and use the platform. MYBS currently focuses on Europe but by expanding their scope they will probably increase the number of visits on their website and therefore advertising revenues. I believe that it might take some time but if information is up-to-date and that alumni play their role then it will draw students. It is something that has not been done before. There are other website that offer such search engine (www.findamasters.com/, http://www.mastersportal.eu/ , http://www.studyineurope.eu/masters) but not in such a way.
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MYBS (Mind Your own Business School) is a multisided platform made to help students to make their choice when they want to choose the business school where they will make their studies.
The schools are ranked following the ranking of the Financial Times, but they also provide more information about them on the website. For example, the future student can choose more specificly the studies he wants to make ( management, strategy, marketing,…) but also the fee, the country and the language of the studies.
The platform also provide general information about the school, how to contact it, how to apply,…
What is very interesting is that the student also has the possibility to contact the Alumnis of the school, that can help him in making a decision more easily. The alumnis of the university are very important because they provide information about the future you can have after you went to the school.
The two sides on MYBS are the schools providing one or more masters and the student looking for one. It would also be interesting to have compagnies on the same platform, for example the compagnies who are partners of the schools, that would also help the students making a decision.
But adding compagnies to the platform would add a third side and that could complicate things for each side.
When you look at the platform a bit more, you see that there is a risk of bias, because even if the ranking is based on the one of the Financial Times, you can see that the universities are partners of the website, so they could favorise some universities compared to the others.
It would be interesting to use more sources to make the ranking on the website, that would reduce the impression ob bias the students can have when visiting the platform.
I looked for other platforms providing the same kind of service on the internet, but i didn’t find another platform with the same amount of information that there is on MYBS.
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A multi-sided platform coordinates the demand of distinct groups of customers who need each other in some way. There is an opportunity for a platform to increase social surplus when the 3 following conditions are true: (1) There are distinct groups of customer. (2) A member of one group benefits from having hiss demand coordinated with one or more members of another group. (3) An intermediary can facilitate the coordination more efficiently than bilateral relationships between the members of the groups.
MYBS is a multisided platform. Two main sides/distinct groups are present:
– The alumni representing their university/master program.
– Students looking for a master degree
MYBS plays an intermediary role. Thanks to the website, universities can easily present their main features and can be visible. The search of students looking for a master degree is also eased thanks to the platform: various choices (category of study, language, fee, duration and country) may be selected by the students. Having reduced searching costs, he can easily compare offers from various universities and make his mind according to the information found on the website. Furthermore, MYBS ranks the business schools according to the preferences of the student but also according to the Financial Times ranking. Extra information such as living costs (proposed thanks to Numbeo) or access to the university’s website are available and can be valuable to the new student. Eases of university tracking can be made thanks to a third party (here LinkedIn or Facebook). In conclusion, MYBS facilitates the interaction between the 2 different groups. The 3 conditions are met. MYBS is a multisided platform.
The price structure chosen by MYBS is clearly supported by the universities. Future students don’t pay anything to the intermediary. However, the platform is likely financed by universities. Two proves can be exposed for this assumption. First of all, the right side of the website is dedicated to the universities which are in partnership with MYBS. This place of the web page is mainly reserved to advertizing. Secondly, all universities are not represented on the website (e.g. for the Belgian ones: KU Leuven and the LSM are proposed but what about the others? The university of Gent is a very good one in Belgium but cannot be find on MYBS). Although, it would be in the advantage of everyone that the number of available university increases. The more universities are available, the best it can answer to the personal preferences of students and attract them. However, this is a tricky act because of the “chicken-and-egg” problem: to attract one group, you need to attract the other one, but where should you start? This is why MYBS has used the “divide-and-conquer” strategy: it subsidizes the participation of new students (divide; students do not pay and benefit from the service), hoping to recover the loss on universities (conquer ; pay in order to be visible).
However, MYBS must set governance rules in order to maintain its attractiveness. Information quality must remain at the center of MYBS preoccupation. Otherwise, it could lead to a lemon market (there is no market if the quality is not guaranteed). If the FT rankings are the ones from 2009, students may ask themselves questions about the reliability of the website. Building trust is essential.
Finally, some other platforms (among many others) propose the same services as MYBS: FindAMasters, MasterStudies and prospects. According to me, they are not as good as MYBS. They propose more masters but no rankings (FT or even in terms of fee) are made. The entire list of masters is set without any facilitation for the student. The searching costs are a lot higher in those cases.
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The MYBS multisided platform brings together future or current students with business schools as well as with alumni having studied at each business school listed on the website. By bringing these groups together, MYBS enables futures students to reduce search costs. The MYBS platform complies information about each of the business schools figuring on their website to offer future students tools to search, select, and compare different masters among a variety of business schools. Among the information about the master degrees is a contact person who has studied the master, an alumni, and who can provide information. This network of alumni is most certainly a strength of the platform as it gives additional information besides numbers.
Another way in which MYBS brings business schools and future students together is through the organization of school fairs. By doing so, MYBS distinguishes itself from other websites offering similar services to future students, like the financial times with its business school rankings. Indeed, futures students benefit from the opportunity to actually meet a member of the business school they are interested in.
Of course, there are some risks involved in the MYBS multisided platform. A risk I immediately thought of when consulting the website is the risk of information bias. The advertisements on the website are all from Universities or business schools listed on the website. The question then is whether or not MYBS accepts to put incorrect information on the platform to satisfy their advertisers. This risk is subdued by the large amount of information coming from the Financial Times, which is a well-trusted institution. We can deduce that additional information coming from different actors reduces the risk of information bias.
But what other actors or sides could MYBS bring on board? An obvious choice would be to bring employers to the network. They could contribute by giving their opinion on the content of the master degrees, thus providing extra information. This information will be highly valuable to future students as they choose to study to meet the expectations of future employers.
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MYBS seems to be a two sided platform, where actual student that we can call the representatives and future student are interaction together.
As we know, the purpose of a multisided platform is to create value by enabling interaction between two or more customer groups. And the value of customers in one side is increasing with the number on the other side of the platform. (Haigu, 2014)
If the representatives are adding information about their universities, that will enlarge the choice for the future student, it’s also in the interest of the Business School to provide as much information as possible. A business school is well-named, it is also a business, so the more people you will have on the other side of the platform, the more you have opportunities (and competitions) to attract new students. But here is a quite important problem; a rational actor (the representatives) will not give information about his university if he or she doesn’t have an interest to do so, expect for a few ones. Then, in order to solve that, a solution may be to charge them with a negative price if they don’t provide information and personal experiences. A simple example could be that a student will not get his scholarship if he doesn’t give feedback about his or her university.
The risk with that kind of platform is the bias information. Some universities may not be objective about their programs. That is why we can observe another board present on the platform. Even if they are not interacting, it will give some neutral information and different ways of seeing the universities programs. As for example, well-known European or World rankings given that are given by the Financial times, Forbes, find-MBA.com… Based on different criteria as reputation, access to future careers, thesis…
MYBS can be a strong incentive for universities to provide pertinent information about themselves. And it will gain in legitimacy is more and more students join the platform. After a while the platform will be more and more pertinent as future students becoming representatives, will also give their negative or/and positive experience to increase the legitimacy of the platform.
Sources:
Hagiu, A. (2014). Strategic Decisions for Multisided Platforms. MIT Sloan Management Review 55 (2), 71-80.
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2014
http://www.forbes.com/education/
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As we can read in the article of Hagiu (2013), “multisided platforms (MSPs) are technologies, products or services that create value primarily by enabling direct interactions between two or more customer or participant groups”. In that sense, MYBS is a multisided platform as, through its search engine, this site enables the interactions between potential students and the top 70 Master in Management ranked by the Financial Times. On one side, the potential students are looking for the best master’s degree that fits their ideals. On the other side, universities are represented by alumni and current students that can be contacted by potential students. MYSB permits the interaction between those two sides. The search can be done around 5 criteria: category, language, fee, duration and country. And MYBS gives information about the university, the master, the application, the scholarship, the ranking, the contact alumni, etc.
Concerning the price structure, the potential students are the subsidy-side as they don’t have to pay anything to access to the search engine. If they had to pay on MYBS, they will certainly search on another free website as MYBS isn’t the only site bringing together different masters (http://www.diplomeo.com/master, http://fr.mastersportal.eu/, http://www.findamasters.com/…). The universities represent the money-side. They are willing to pay as it is important for them to have a lot of student looking at the masters’ offers.
Those competitors have the own particularities, some focus not only on Master but also on PhD for example. They don’t give the same information and don’t enable this direct contact with alumni. They globally allows potential student to find a master but this is it.
As for the governance rules, MYBS controls the access of universities. The website only shows information about the top 70 Master in Management ranked by the Financial Times. It can be seen as a mark of quality but as a bias as well. However, they don’t regulate the access of the potential students, anyone can join. MYBS regulates the interaction by allowing the contact with the alumni by being logged in with Facebook or LinkedIn. This could be a problem for potential students who don’t have those kinds of accounts or simply don’t want to use them.
I think that this website is a great way for student to find a master. The site is clear, easy to use and allows making researches based on pertinent criteria. However, I think that they could improve the website by directly displaying comments made by alumni and students. In that way you can already have an opinion and only contact alumni when you have a real interest in the Master.
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The MYBS is a platform which brings together information, and is essentially a comparison website, but for education programs. Living prices are provided by another service, numbeo.com, which is crowd-sourced, as this post, and University rankings by Financial times. The university information presented is gathered from the universities websites. The service also provides a way to ask questions from alumni and current students, and this I believe is done through the partner student organizations which are mentioned in the partners section. Hence the sides of the platform are students seeking business schools, and the business schools as well as the alumni and current students, making it a multi-sided platform. I believe that the business schools pay to be on the service, as they have the most to gain, as there are similar services such as findamasters.com, and national or local services such as studyinbelgium.be (which I believe is governmentally financed). Hence it important for the universities to be on such list sites, where students look up information about their possible studies.
The site differs from similar sites by its access to alumni and current students and noting living costs. The site essentially also collects information from the user. When logging in with Facebook a pop-up appears stating: “MYBS will receive the following info: your public profile, friend list, email address, work history and education history”. This linking is needed to access the alumni students and current students. The information gained can be used to develop the site, target advertising as well give information to the universities and students unions about the demographics of the usage of the site.
I believe that the universities have to pay, as using the service is free for the students seeking education possibilities. As there are free competitors, making the seekers of education pay would probably deter most of them from using the site, as most of the information is readily available, as the site mainly gathers information. This website can be seen as a marketing and comparison website for universities, and hence they benefit most from this outlet. I believe that the student unions as partners either get money from answering possible contacts or do it for free, as the benefit for them is rather limited from the service.
The MYBS site acts also as an advertising tool for the fairs they organize. I believe it is likely that the fair is free for the possible students, but the presenters pay a rent on their stands. Hence the MYBS generates income also offline, to keep the service running. The MYBS site has also links to the university websites and their brochure, application and scholarship pages. The site may generate income also from clicking these links, which would be paid by the university.
Comparing to similar sites I have used earlier (I used studyinbelgium.be when deciding on my current studies), MYBS seems better, as it has more information in one place. Especially when studying with a budget the information about the tuition fees and living costs are very handy in the decision making process. Also the contacts of alumni and current students are valuable. However I believe that the information from current and previous students is biased, as they have probably an over positive experience with the university, as the students with neutral and negative experiences will not be active in giving advice. This is similar to the bias in tripadvisor comments mentioned previously in the course.
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MYBS is a platform where both, alumni from business schools and future or actual students are present in order to interact. On one side, business schools demonstrate their presence and course opportunities to an academic public. On the other side, the academic public is seeking for opportunities and searching for the business school that suits them best, according to different criteria: price, country … The main facilities of this platform such as research engine, useful information on each business schools, application process, scholarship… make it easier to find the appropriate school and MBA due to clearness and visibility from the website.
Besides all sorts of practical facts on each school, the Financial Times ranking is an additional pertinent information to be able to compare schools based on their own criteria. In order to offer a personalised solution, MYBS proposes other information to obtain the most accurate result, suited to individual requirements. Based on the location, the language, fee and other relevant facts, a (future) student will found a various choice of programs between several business schools: “set of business schools is based on top 70 Master in Management ranking by the Financial Times”.
MYBS is the perfect example of a multisided platform promoting interaction between alumni and potential students. The interaction is available in a formal way throughout the school website or in a less formal way, thanks to social medial like LinkedIn and Facebook. The main issue of this model comes from the future students who will apply for a business school; will they also participate and add value to the website? I think that they have no incentive to do so and therefore, with time the information on the website won’t be up to date. But reputation and prestige are factors that can be taken into consideration in this case as the business schools are the best in Europe and so, being part of a community from a prestigious school can enhance the pride of alumni’s. These schools are built on reputation and therefore, the prestige has to convey throughout the alumni’s word of mouth.
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MYBS is indeed a platform whose utmost goal is to give information about master programmes to potential students in order to opt for their best option. The information ranges from university characteristics (e.g. tuition fees) to indirect impact criteria as cost of living which is catered by Numbeo, another information provider. The main features that platform offer as I regard refer to horizontal classification whereas the most popular sites as Financial Times ranking and QS rankings focus upon hierarchical classification. This distinction is the main opportunity for MYBS.
The most obvious sides which are on board are the potential students and the universities, this platform might be readily enticed to get other sides on board though. Another side not so obvious is the hierarchical classification provider which is FT because this enrich the information by setting up a quality ranking. One potential leap towards exploiting complementarities according to the jobs-to-be-done approach from freemium.org is to bring other valuable information for students like housing services and language learning schools. The pros are obviously new revenue streams and getting more potential students into the most valuable side for the firms. In the same token the cons are the lesser degree in which the platform can control the trueness of the information from different sides as Numbeo which can mislead with shoddy information and the competition among the firms (within and between sides) can unleash uptight situations since they also could offer the same service. Summing up new sides in the platform cast big challenges and pleasant rewards.
Regarding the governance rules MYBS must apply should be related to market failures which jeopardise its business: information quality. As the lemon markets failure in a nutshell tell us about there’s no market if the quality is not guaranteed so the platform must assure the quality about the organisations involved. It might employ certain measures as off-limits entry rule to only firms (except universities) certified by itself as good quality element. As well another endeavour could be establish a mechanism with all firms and universities promising to coordinate with the platform in order that the information is always updated. So the governance rules have to deal with market failures as the quality information in the MYBS’s case.
The prospects as far as I am concerned upon this kind of platforms rely on: 1) how good the actual information matches with the provided by the platform and 2) how much and well the platform can milk the complementarities and then applying the rightful pricing strategies based on indirect network effects. This platform could follow the Freemium model besides if they create sufficient value for the students side. One last remark is a caveat because MYBS must continuously cope with the students’ trust so the trust-building strategies should not be a dearth. Lim et al (2006) suggest the portal affiliation and the satisfied consumer endorsement as instruments for this purpose. MYBS have tried the latter through convincing some students in universities to be a sort of representatives thereof and even it was in a fair in Leuven.
For the sake of wrapping up this, one final thought. Behavioural economics has taught humans just give up when the tangle of concerns gets more complex and they take shortcuts. Therefore there will exist good prospects wherever the people have jobs to be done and the complexity that entails the information on internet is not at all a walk in the park for anybody.
References:
1) Freemium.org
2) Do I Trust You Online, and If So, Will I Buy? An Empirical Study of Two Trust-Building Strategies- Kai Lim, Choong Sia, Matthew Lee and Izak Benbasa
3) Hagiu, A. (2014). Strategic Decisions for Multisided Platforms. MIT Sloan Management Review 55 (2), 71-80.
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MYBS is a multisided platform that brought on board: universities, advertisers, Alumni (and current students) and potential students. The value for future students is indeed the reduction of search costs to find the most appropriate master. I think that another side could bring on board such as firms to help future students to have a complete view about the master choice. From my point of view, MYBS would add benefit for the platform with firms that may make comments on the skills that the graduated students acquired in the master or to point the weaknesses of the program compared to what is needed on the spot.
The cons of an additional side are the difficulty to find a « common denominator » between all the sides of the platform also it is hard to balance all the interests of all the sides. In the case of MYBS the common denominator is to match student and universities to find the master that suit them the most so that achieve a high quality qualification adapted to the needs and to constraints of each. Typically, the final goal is to satisfy the needs of firms. The pros are the cross-side network effects that could benefit every side. Additionally, an additional side could provide an additional source of income.
The principal functionality of the platform is that it allows to select the category of the master, the language, the fee, the duration and the country. The main platform feature is the presence of the ranking from the Financial Times for each masters and indicate the cost living. An additional feature of the platform is that it tries to have a contact person at each university for all masters. In addition, future student can keep the track with their favorite masters through Facebook and LinkedIn. MYBS summarizes for each master the useful information such as: category of master, languages, entry level, starting date and remarks. To have access to the Alumni side, we have to log in with Facebook or with LinkedIn.
Regarding the price structure, the potential students do not pay for access to the platform. The sources of revenues of the platform come from advertisers and universities.
FindAMasters ( http://www.findamasters.com/) is another search tool. In comparison with MYBS that focuses on Masters in Europe, FindAMasters proposes a larger range of information related to Masters, MBAs, PhDs, Funding, …all around the world. The disadvantage is that one can be lost because there is no ranking between the results proposed by the platform.
The website StudyPortals ( http://www.studyportals.eu/) like MYBS also focuses on the Masters in Europe. Moreover, students can share their study experiences, find scholarships and grants to study in Europe, but the inconvenience is the absence of ranking among the masters.
Reference:
Hagiu, A. (2014). Strategic Decisions for Multisided Platforms. MIT Sloan Management
Review 55 (2), 71-80.
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I see on this platform two sides that interact with each other. On one side, we have the students or future students that are looking for information about various business schools, and on the other side, we have “student representatives” of the business schools, who can be alumni or master students. Those can be contacted by logged in users through contact forms. This is somehow similar to the issue we discussed in class whether a platform existed for future exchange students if they wanted to receive feedback from previous experiences.
Listing and rating business schools isn’t something new. Indeed, the Financial Times has a similar website (http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/) which offers a list of business schools that are ranked under different criteria (e.g. best master in management, best MBA, best master in finance, etc.). As on MYBS, schools can be found through a search engine and a World map, but while FT is essentially focused on ranking the schools, MYBS’s core team adds more information about the fees, the durations of the programs, the living costs in such cities, some interesting links and other general remarks, in addition to FT’s ranking itself.
The ultimate purpose of MYBS is to make it multisided by building an extensive network of student representatives in addition to the core team. To make this possible, let’s remember that 3 conditions have to be met. First, the two distinct groups have already been defined. Second, indirect network effects have to be generated, and finally, the platform can clearly facilitate the coordination more efficiently than bilateral relationships. However, in order to be able to build a network of available alumni, one has to consider what incentive they have to allocate time in answering future student’s questions. As seen in class, the “homo economicus” probably has none, and the network effect would rationally fail. But we have also seen that such initiatives managed to generate successful network effects in the past thanks to the willingness of users to contribute to the community and share their experiences, in a somehow irrational way, economically speaking.
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MYBS helps prospective students to search available Masters courses around the world in different languages. The main functionalities and features of the website are informative and promotional. This website offers students the tools to ‘search, select and compare different masters offered by top business schools in Europe.’ They assure prospective students that they can offer a network whereby students can speak with a contact in each University to advise and inform them about specific course details, in an aim to avoid students only choosing their programme based on rankings and numerical lists. This is a multi-sided platform as the students are the customers and the universities are those having their demand for students co-ordinated by MYBS informing prospective students; MYBS simply acts as an intermediary.
Show lessAnother side that MYBS could bring on board are ex-students or graduates of such Masters courses. They could give testimonies and real accounts of how they found their experience to be at their particular university/Masters course. This could help to combat the trust issue experienced by many in relation to multi-sided platforms.
MYBS’ price structure is free for students to search, as they are price sensitive and would not be willing to pay to view the information which can be sourced, at length, but still freely elsewhere. It seems that there are plenty of ‘sponsors’ or partners which help to fund academic research in the listed universities, but also probably pay an advertising fee to be shown on the website. e.g. Deloitte, BeanZ, OTM Foods. This can help to generate revenue and fund the online business.
In terms of governance rules (regulation of access and interactions) on MYBS, they do not take responsibility for any of the information rights, and claim that it all comes from the universities’ websites themselves, stating that “MYBS is not responsible for information errors.” Any student can access the website, but the universities have to be screened before appearing on the website. In terms of interactions, MYBS only operates as an informative guide for students, and a platform for which universities can advertise their courses. It rests that any interaction between prospective students and the university should be done directly, and MYBS cannot facilitate that communication.