Call for Proposals | Multiverse and NFT Platform Strategy
Fall 2021 Platform Design, Management, and Strategy Projects, Dartmouth College
This fall will be my third year teaching Platform Design, Management, and Strategy with Geoff Parker at Dartmouth College. This course attracts many of the top students from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and the Tuck School of Business. The best part of this course is working directly with companies on platform related strategic challenges. These projects yield rich analysis, a written report and a final presentations by the students.
Call for proposals
This year we are excited to offer companies the opportunity to explore a platform strategy for your organization. We are open to a variety of platform project proposals. One area of particular interest is strategy questions related to the metaverse and/or NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
With the rapid growth of both metaverse platforms and NFT marketplaces, more companies need to analyze opportunities and make investments.
We welcome projects by the following:
Companies seeking to launch and scale a metaverse platform or NFT marketplace
Companies seeking to determine how to generate the most value from becoming a platform participant via the metaverse and/or NFTs
Companies that are seeking to position themselves as a platform complement, which may involve technology, digital content or entire experiences
Four to five students will work on the projects with active guidance from Geoff Parker and myself. A wide range of companies have participated in this opportunity in the past including many dynamic startups as well as some of the world’s largest companies, such as CVS, Shell, Mitsubishi and GE Healthcare.
Benefits
There are multiple benefits in sponsoring a project:
1) First and foremost is the chance to solve a real business problem. This can include identifying new problems as well as new opportunities previously unrecognized by your organization.
2) Your organization has a chance to identify students with skills and interests that match your needs.
3) Student project work will be undertaken under the supervision of world-class experts in platform strategy and design.
4) Your organization will gain access to course materials.
5) Members of your organization may attend the final project presentations and learn from other related projects.
Costs
We ask companies to make a gift of $3,000 to Dartmouth which helps to provide some funds to support the course and its projects. This fee covers a student team spanning 2 months.
If any student team elects to tackle the project, work is assumed to have begun and an invoice will be generated. If work has begun but the work is not approved by your organization before the end of the semester, funds are retained by the College.
There are some funds available to support startups and non-profit organizations that do not have budget so that those types of organizations can also participate on a case-by-case basis.
Expectations
Participation on your end has only 2 prerequisites.
The first is a commitment of executive hours to describe the issues, answer questions, and provide feedback on the intermediate and final proposals. We estimate the total time to be about 16-20 hours spread over six to eight weeks.
The second is a simple 1-page project description provided by your organization at the start of class to help student teams select projects. On project conclusion, your organization should participate in a project review board where students present their results. In addition, sponsors should provide a grade for the quality of the final report received. Your evaluation will affect the students’ project grades.
Participation by students includes a commitment to conduct at least three interviews with people or firms you designate, to conduct original field research to address your problem and to provide all items listed among the deliverables.
Timeline & Deliverables
Students will make their choices and then projects will begin in the last half of September and conclude the first half of November. Your organization will provide:
If you have questions regarding this opportunity, please feel free to contact me at: Peter.C.Evans@dartmouth.edu
We look forward to hearing from your regarding this unique and exciting opportunity.
For more on the multiverse and platforms see the very interest discussion I had this past week with Caltech Prof. George Djorgovski a leading authority on the metaverse. This discussion was hosted by Hari Abburi, the Global Director of Caltech Executive Education.