vs. InVision
Figma
Network effects: colleagues and the talent pool
- What it did
- Designers, PMs and engineers in the same files
- InVision
- Figma overtook it for prototyping by 2019
Expertise network effects
What are Expertise network effects?
More trained practitioners make a tool more useful to employers; employer adoption makes learning it more valuable.
How Expertise network effects work
More trained practitioners make a tool more useful to employers; employer adoption makes learning it more valuable.
How companies won with Expertise network effects
From the win chains in Strategy Canon case studies: what the winner did, and what its rival did at the same step.
vs. Cerner · 2012-2025
Epic Systems
Certified-builder pool: an expertise network around the product
- What it did
- Certification only through an Epic customer or consulting firm, trained in Verona
- Cerner
- Over half of clients of Cerner's own implementation services were dissatisfied, citing 'poorly trained, inexperienced consultants, many of whom are just out of college' (KLAS, 2019)
vs. Qlik · 2011–19
Tableau
Expertise network effect
- What it did
- Tableau job demand up 1,581% (2011–15); 86,000+ customer accounts (2018)
- Qlik
- Absent from the fastest-growing skills list; $612M revenue (2015)
vs. Siebel Systems · 2003–24
Salesforce
Trailblazer community of admins and developers carries it between employers
- What it did
- Dreamforce from ~1,000 attendees (2003) to 171,000 (2019)
- Siebel Systems
- Siebel was built to sell through a large, expensive direct sales force (Cleveland)
Also tagged: Autodesk
The question to ask of a company
Does a larger trained workforce improve hiring or deployment for employers, and does employer adoption encourage others to learn the tool?
Who names it
| Author | What they call it / where it appears |
|---|---|
| NFX | Expertise |
Note. Separate the external labor-pool benefit from one customer’s retraining costs. Education distribution alone does not establish the feedback.