The standard way to seed a two-sided market is to make it easy and cheap for early adopters on both sides to join in, and then modify the platform based on this experience to draw in others. Sometimes this can involve multi-tier, or “freemium” pricing arrangements.

     Here is what could happen in the new consumer-built software-application industry. The time line is at the top.

     Some developers will move from building apps (green circles) to building reusable business-object resources (blue circles) to be used by the wiring platform. Everybody else will use these resources to wire up apps (red circles).

     If the platform is managed well, this could generate new classes of economic activity. Here are two.

     1.     There are over two billion smartphones in the world. Many of these are in the hands of potential entrepreneurs without programming skills in emerging economies.

     2.     Closer to home, vertical industries software encapsulates knowledge about a particular line of business in applications. (The following slide contains a list of over 60 vertical-industry-software categories.) I envision many system integrators who are now constrained by black-box vertical applications taking their businesses in new directions.