Platform differentiation plan for platform leverage across market niches

This paper presents a methodology of proposing a platform differentiation plan (PDP) to provide a platform leverage strategy across market niches. PDP is designed to provide a consistent balance between mutual differentiation and components sharing for the leveraged platforms at the early product planning stage. Two indices, i.e. differentiation index (DI) and commonality opportunity index (COI), are presented to represent the dimensions of product platform differentiation and commonality, respectively. Through a case study of electronic test equipment (ETE), the usefulness of PDP for the platform leverage strategy across market niches is demonstrated.