{"id":182,"date":"2015-11-28T14:26:30","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T19:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/u-s-news-world-report-driving-value-to-a-multisided-market\/"},"modified":"2015-12-02T21:39:23","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T02:39:23","slug":"u-s-news-world-report-driving-value-to-a-multisided-market","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/u-s-news-world-report-driving-value-to-a-multisided-market\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. News & World Report: Driving Value to a Multisided Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

For more than three decades U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) has published the rankings college students and hospitals love to hate.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 The past several years, however, have seen a proliferation of imitators, from Forbes<\/em> to the Princeton Review, Truven to the Economist.<\/em>\u00a0 Nevertheless, in spite of intensifying competition, the U.S. News Best Colleges and Best Hospitals rankings remain the most oft-cited and influential in the United States.\u00a0 The reason may have less to do with editorial considerations\u2014after all, USNWR publishes its methodologies in full, including data sources and mathematical transformations\u2014than with its careful cultivation of a multisided market.<\/p>\n

Consider USNWR\u2019s customers.\u00a0 The most obvious and visible are ordinary consumers; however, there are also the institutions being ranked.\u00a0 \u00a0Consumers rely on USNWR for recommendations about where to seek care or what schools to apply to given their grades and academic interests.\u00a0 Because these individuals are making decisions about how to spend money, USNWR becomes an attractive place for education- or healthcare-related providers to advertise their wares.\u00a0 A pacemaker manufacturer has good reason to pay for page views on USNWR\u2019s Cardiology rankings, since the site\u2019s readers may be deciding what devices will best support their lifestyles after implantation.\u00a0 Advertising is one of USNWR\u2019s principal revenue streams and the first prong of its business model.<\/p>\n

\"http:\/\/colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com\/best-colleges\"<\/a>
http:\/\/colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com\/best-colleges<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Central to this revenue source is an operating model which supports a broad and engaged readership with unbiased advice.\u00a0 To maintain this \u201casset,\u201d USNWR must uphold the public\u2019s confidence in the independence and impartiality of its editorial function.\u00a0 Only in that way will advertisers continue to see value in USNWR\u2019s community.\u00a0 Thus, the operating model beautifully supports USNWR\u2019s goal of driving value to its two customers, consumers and advertisers, because ad revenue supports, rather than undermines, USNWR\u2019s mission.\u00a0 But there is third player in the ecosystem to which USNWR must also cater: hospitals and universities.<\/p>\n

USNWR strives to promote a productive relationship with the institutions it ranks. \u00a0And for good reason.\u00a0 Although USNWR collects most of the data on which it bases its rankings from publically available sources, some of it also comes from universities and hospitals themselves.\u00a0 To encourage those institutions to participate, USNWR must also drive value to those organizations.\u00a0 To that end, USNWR formats its website as a sort-of consumer directory.\u00a0 Users of the site can search by geography and specialty to get referrals to programs which offer the services they want or need.\u00a0 In a sense, by taking part in the rankings hospitals and colleges get free advertising on a heavily trafficked consumer advice website.<\/p>\n

Of course, USNWR benefits from its relationships with schools and medical centers in other ways, too.\u00a0 Experts from within those communities serve on USNWR advisory boards to ensure that the rankings avail themselves of the best thinking and most up-to-date research on quality and outcomes measurement.\u00a0 That in turn serves as a basis for sustainable differentiation.\u00a0 Because USNWR has access to reputable data that its competitors do not and because USNWR can draw on the collective expertise of many hundreds of thought leaders to produce the most meaningful results, USNWR can tell a compelling story to its consumer and advertiser audiences about the value of its real estate.\u00a0 Again, the operating model strongly reinforces the business model.<\/p>\n

There is an additional subtler benefit to these relationships with hospitals and universities, as well.\u00a0 Since they contribute directly to the creation of the rankings, they are more inclined to lend credibility to their results.\u00a0 This fact tempers the resistance of administrators whose institutions perform badly and creates evangelists of those whose institutions perform well.<\/p>\n

\"\"
http:\/\/penn-heart-vascular.pennmedicine.org\/2014\/07\/us-news-world-report-names-penn-heart.html<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Given the beneficial reciprocity inherent in this marketplace, it\u2019s not surprising that USNWR is careful not to disrupt the ecosystem\u2019s balance, even as it seeks to monetize the value its website and rankings drive to hospitals and universities.\u00a0 To accomplish this, the second prong of USNWR\u2019s business model consists of two distinct elements.\u00a0 The first is badge licensing.\u00a0 Hospitals or universities which perform well in the rankings may purchase \u201cbadges\u201d from U.S. News & World Report for use in external advertisements.\u00a0 Beyond the sales benefit, the visibility of the badges among consumers have the resultant effect of raising the profile of USNWR\u2019s rankings as a whole.\u00a0 This in turn boosts web traffic, which increases the prices of ads on USNWR\u2019s website.\u00a0 Again, each element of the operating model mutually and collectively reinforces each element of the business model.<\/p>\n

The second is the sale of exhaust data to hospitals and universities.\u00a0 Because USNWR collects data directly from the institutions it ranks, its dataset is unique.\u00a0 And because USNWR uses the data for quality measurement, it is tailor-made for peer benchmarking.\u00a0 As such, USNWR can actively promote the sale of its data archive to improve market transparency and drive quality improvement without risking criticism as a \u201cpay-to-play\u201d provider.<\/p>\n

As an editorial outfit U.S. News & World Report is an unusual intermediary.\u00a0 Nonetheless, it is a great example an organization which sits at the center of an ecosystem and manages to drive individual value to all of the players in its market: hospitals and universities, consumers, and advertisers.\u00a0 It supports these value propositions with a robust business and operating model so aligned with one another that each player extracts value from the system without weakening the positions of other participants.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> http:\/\/theairspace.net\/commentary\/u-s-news-best-college-rankings-1983-2013\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once just an editorial company, U.S. News &amp; World Report has transformed itself into a multi-platform publisher of rankings and datasets that occupies the heart of a vibrant ecosystem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1197,"featured_media":183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[41,42,40,7],"class_list":["post-182","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthcare","category-higher-education","category-us-news-world-report","category-winner"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/assignment\/the-tom-challenge-tom-winners-and-losers-assignment\/","yoast_head":"\nU.S. News & World Report: Driving Value to a Multisided Market - Technology and Operations Management<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/u-s-news-world-report-driving-value-to-a-multisided-market\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"U.S. News & World Report: Driving Value to a Multisided Market - Technology and Operations Management\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Once just an editorial company, U.S. News &amp; 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