Protocol network effects

What are Protocol network effects?

Wider adoption of a shared standard or format increases the value of compatibility.

Wider adoption of a shared standard or format increases the value of compatibility.

From the win chains in Strategy Canon case studies: what the winner did, and what its rival did at the same step.

vs. RethinkDB

Default document API for developers' code and skills

What it did: Most popular modern database since 2013; LinkedIn MongoDB skills exceed nearly all non-relational rivals combined (2016)
RethinkDB: Users kept asking 'how is RethinkDB different from MongoDB?'

vs. Cerner · 2005-2023

Care Everywhere protocol: merging systems join the network's record

What it did: Care Everywhere built 2004-05 and mandated for every Epic customer
Cerner: Faulkner: Cerner exchanged 'documents not patients' (2022)

vs. Intergraph · 1989–2001

DWG becomes the exchange currency of design

What it did: 60% of PC CAD (1989); ~70% of the Windows CAD installed base (1997)
Intergraph: Left proprietary hardware (1992), lost $164.6M (1993) and money through 1997

vs. Amazon MSK · 2015–21

A practitioner community makes Kafka the standard

What it did: Confluent launched Kafka Summit for developers and committers (announced Sept 2015, first April 2016) with Kafka at thousands of companies
Amazon MSK: AWS adopted the rival standard: MSK (GA May 2019) ran open-source Kafka 1.1.1 and 2.1.0

Also tagged: LiveRamp

Does each additional compatible participant make exchange more useful, and can competing products share that benefit?

Author	What they call it / where it appears
NFX	Protocol

Note. A shared format can benefit compatible rivals. Accumulated-file migration costs are a separate mechanism.