Why Patientslikeme's Business Model is so successful?

PatientsLikeMe is an online patient network headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its website was launched on October 10, 2005 with the goal of connecting patients with one another, improving their outcomes, and enabling research.

Social impact:

Life changing: provides hope, self-actualization, motivation, affiliation/belonging

Emotional: reduces anxiety, provides access, wellness, therapeutic value

Functional: saves time, organizes, reduces effort, avoids hassles, Quality, variety, informs, integrates

Aikido:

The aikido business model is often characterized as using a competitor's strength to get an edge over them. This is accomplished through finding weaknesses in a competitor's strategic position. In addition, it adds to marketing sustainability by exposing rivals' flaws, finding internal and external areas for development, and attracting consumers via specific product offers that deviate from the norm.

Benchmarking services:

Benchmarking is a technique for evaluating performance and gaining insights via data analytics. It may be used to conduct internal research on your firm or compare it to other businesses to enhance business processes and performance indicators following best practices. Typically, three dimensions are measured: quality, time, and cost. In this manner, they may ascertain the targets' performance and, more significantly, the business processes that contribute to these companies' success. The digital transformation era has spawned a slew of data analysis-focused software businesses.

Blue ocean strategy:

The blue ocean approach is predicated on the premise that market limits and industry structure are not predetermined and may be reconfigured via the actions and attitudes of industry participants. This is referred to as the reconstructionist perspective by the writers. Assuming that structure and market boundaries exist solely in managers' thoughts, practitioners who subscribe to this perspective avoid being constrained by actual market structures. To them, more demand exists, primarily untapped. The core of the issue is determining how to produce it.

Combining data within and across industries:

How can data from other sources be integrated to generate additional value? The science of big data, combined with emerging IT standards that enable improved data integration, enables new information coordination across businesses or sectors. As a result, intelligent executives across industries will see big data for what it is: a revolution in management. However, as with any other significant organizational transformation, the difficulties associated with becoming a big data-enabled company may be tremendous and require hands-on?or, in some instances, hands-off?leadership.

Community-funded:

The critical resource in this business strategy is a community's intellect. Three distinct consumer groups comprise this multifaceted business model: believers, suppliers, and purchasers. First, believers join the online community platform and contribute to the production of goods by vendors. Second, buyers purchase these goods, which may be visual, aural, or literary in nature. Finally, believers may be purchasers or providers, and vice versa.

Corporate innovation:

Innovation is the outcome of collaborative creativity in turning an idea into a feasible concept, accompanied by a collaborative effort to bring that concept to life as a product, service, or process improvement. The digital era has created an environment conducive to business model innovation since technology has transformed how businesses operate and provide services to consumers.

Crowdsourcing:

Crowdsourcing is a kind of sourcing in which people or organizations solicit donations from Internet users to acquire required services or ideas. Crowdsourcing differs from outsourcing because work may originate from an undefined public (rather than being commissioned from a particular, identified organization). In addition, those crowdsourcing procedures are a combination of bottom-up and top-down. The benefits of crowdsourcing may include reduced prices, increased speed, better quality, increased flexibility, scalability, and variety. An anonymous crowd adopts a solution to a task or issue, usually through the internet. Contributors are compensated or have the opportunity to win a prize if their answer is selected for manufacturing or sale. Customer engagement and inclusion may help build a good rapport with them, resulting in increased sales and income.

Customer data:

It primarily offers free services to users, stores their personal information, and acts as a platform for users to interact with one another. Additional value is generated by gathering and processing consumer data in advantageous ways for internal use or transfer to interested third parties. Revenue is produced by either directly selling the data to outsiders or by leveraging it for internal reasons, such as increasing the efficacy of advertising. Thus, innovative, sustainable Big Data business models are as prevalent and desired as they are elusive (i.e., data is the new oil).

Digital transformation:

Digitalization is the systematic and accelerated transformation of company operations, processes, skills, and models to fully exploit the changes and possibilities brought about by digital technology and its effect on society. Digital transformation is a journey with many interconnected intermediate objectives, with the ultimate aim of continuous enhancement of processes, divisions, and the business ecosystem in a hyperconnected age. Therefore, establishing the appropriate bridges for the trip is critical to success.

Digitization:

This pattern is based on the capacity to convert current goods or services into digital versions, which have several benefits over intangible products, including increased accessibility and speed of distribution. In an ideal world, the digitalization of a product or service would occur without compromising the consumer value proposition. In other words, efficiency and multiplication achieved via digitalization do not detract from the consumer's perceived value. Being digitally sustainable encompasses all aspects of sustaining the institutional framework for developing and maintaining digital objects and resources and ensuring their long-term survival.

Healthcare:

The prevention, treatment, and management of disease and maintaining mental and physical well-being via the medical and allied health professionals' services. It includes diagnostic, preventative, remedial, and therapeutic service providers such as physicians, nurses, hospitals, and other private, public, and volunteer organizations. Additionally, it comprises producers of medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, as well as health insurance companies.

Layer player:

Companies that add value across many markets and sectors are referred to be layer players. Occasionally, specialist companies achieve dominance in a specific niche market. The effectiveness of their operations, along with their economies of size and footprint, establish the business as a market leader.

Long tail:

The long tail is a strategy that allows businesses to realize significant profit out of selling low volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The term was coined in 2004 by Chris Anderson, who argued that products in low demand or with low sales volume can collectively make up market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters but only if the store or distribution channel is large enough.

Make more of It:

The business invests time and money in developing in-house expertise and development that may be used both internally and outside to sell goods or services to clients or third parties. AWS was created to meet Amazon's cloud computing requirements. They quickly discovered that they could offer their services to end-users. At the moment, AWS accounts for about 11% of Amazon's overall income.

Market research:

Market research is any systematic attempt to collect data about target markets or consumers. It is a critical aspect of corporate strategy. While the terms marketing research and market research are frequently used interchangeably, experienced practitioners may want to distinguish between the two, noting that marketing research is concerned with marketing processes. In contrast, market research is concerned with markets. Market research is a critical component of sustaining a competitive edge over rivals.

Mass customization:

Mass customization is a strategy that entails using modular goods and manufacturing processes to allow efficient product individualization. Mass customization refers to producing customized output using flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems in marketing, manufacturing, contact centers, and management. Mass customization is the next frontier for manufacturing and service sectors alike. Beyond the physical product, mass customization is utilized by a diverse variety of software products and services with the goal of developing strong connections with customers via personalization and suggestion.

Micro-segmentation:

Micro-segmentation is a more sophisticated type of segmentation in which a small number of consumers are classified into very accurate categories based on various variables, including behavioral forecasts. Customer micro-segmentation is the process of segmenting a firm's customers into groups based on their relationship with that business. The purpose of segmenting customers is to determine how to relate to each segment's customers to optimize each customer's value to the company.

Network builders:

This pattern is used to connecting individuals. It offers essential services for free but charges for extra services. The network effect is a paradox that occurs when more people utilize a product or service, the more valuable it becomes.

Open business:

Businesses use the open business approach to incorporate goods and services ecosystems from third parties that operate inside the same market framework. Collaboration between companies has the potential to increase the value delivered to the end customer or user. Software developers and platform integrators often use this business model.

Radical transparency:

The concept of radical transparency, or everyone knowing everything, has the potential to be a significant driver of improved organizational performance. This is especially true for new, fast-growing businesses that are under pressure to achieve aggressive sales targets and keep their investors pleased. In governance, politics, software design, and business, radical transparency refers to activities and methods that significantly enhance organizational processes and data openness.

Take the wheel:

Historically, the fundamental principles for generating and extracting economic value were rigorous. Businesses attempted to implement the same business concepts more effectively than their rivals. New sources of sustained competitive advantage are often only accessible via business model reinvention driven by disruptive innovation rather than incremental change or continuous improvement.

Technology trends:

New technologies that are now being created or produced in the next five to ten years will significantly change the economic and social landscape. These include but are not limited to information technology, wireless data transmission, human-machine connection, on-demand printing, biotechnology, and sophisticated robotics.

Trading data:

Combining disparate data sets enables businesses to develop a variety of new offerings for complementary companies. Robustness is a property that describes a model's, test's, or system's ability to perform effectively when its variables or assumptions are changed, ensuring that a robust concept operates without fail under various conditions. In general, robustness refers to a system's capacity to deal with unpredictability while remaining practical.

Two-sided market:

Two-sided marketplaces, also called two-sided networks, are commercial platforms featuring two different user groups that mutually profit from the web. A multi-sided platform is an organization that generates value mainly via the facilitation of direct contacts between two (or more) distinct kinds of connected consumers (MSP). A two-sided market enables interactions between many interdependent consumer groups. The platform's value grows as more groups or individual members of each group use it. For example, eBay is a marketplace that links buyers and sellers. Google connects advertising and searchers. Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are also bidirectional, linking consumers and marketers.