The Platform Playbook: Leeya Hendricks on Ecosystem-Led B2B Growth

With ecosystems increasingly outperforming standalone firms, marketing leaders’ key skills may lie in their ability to get their organisations to influence, persuade, enable, and collaborate. In an ever-noisier and more complex market, the companies that can co-create, communicate and change to bring customers value tend to be the winners - but it requires a very different approach.  

In this episode, former three-time global CMO Leeya Hendricks makes the case for platform thinking in B2B marketing, where value is co-created across networks of customers, partners and complementors rather than pushed through linear channels. 

She shares insights from her new book The Platform Playbook and explains why the CMO is uniquely positioned to orchestrate ecosystem growth - connecting product, technology, data and partners around shared value.

What We Cover:

• Why "platforms over pipelines" is the future of B2B marketing
• The three misconceptions holding organisations back from platform thinking
• A practical four-dimension framework for operating marketing as a platform
• Why the funnel was always just a convenient model, not reality
• How to measure ecosystem health beyond traditional marketing metrics
• The unexpected cultural transformation that happens when organisations embrace co-creation

Key Takeaways

1. Platforms aren't technology - they're business models and systems of value creation
2. Customers trust ecosystems, not isolated brands
3. Sharing multiplies value in ecosystems, even though leaders fear it dilutes value
4. The CMO's role is to make silos more permeable, not destroy them
5. Think long-term stickiness, not short-term campaigns

 

About Leeya Hendricks

Leeya is the author of The Platform Playbook (Palgrave Macmillan), Managing Director of Hark Consultants, and has served in three global CMO roles across major technology companies including IBM and Oracle. She lectures in digital ecosystems and orchestration, and runs My Barre Vibes, a digital-first fitness platform.

 

Connect with Leeya on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-leeya-hendricks-120b95a/

 

Order The Platform Playbook (affiliate link):
https://uk.bookshop.org/a/15792/9783032080301

 

Find out more about My Barre Vibes:
https://www.mybarrevibes.com/

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