Good decisions are critical to well-functioning societies:.

Getting rid of human judgments altogether – even those from highly experienced and credentialed people – and relying solely on numbers plugged into formulas, often yields better results.

Don’t anthropomorphize computers – they hate it.

The platform can also use the extensive tool kit of revenue management techniques to shape which suppliers each buyer sees, and how prominently. It’s not too cynical to expect that a platform might use this power to feature lesser-known suppliers over more famous ones, all else being equal.

Owners of premium brands can charge more for their offerings, but the owners of two-sided networks want to pay to sellers as little as possible of the money they take in from buyers. The result is an obvious tension. Many platforms, especially when they’re new and trying to build volume and network effects, want to have on board at least one prestigious brand. But as platforms grow, they want to keep more of the consumer’s share of both mind and wallet.

Our world is increasingly complex, often chaotic, and always fast-flowing. This makes forecasting something between tremendously difficult and actually impossible, with a strong shift toward the latter as timescales get longer.

Pricing strategies for two-sided networks can be aggressive and seemingly nonsensical if you don’t understand their peculiar economics. In particular, changes in the quantity demanded on one side of the network can affect demand on the other side of the network...Lowering the price on one side of the network increases demand on both sides of the network, creating an extra benefit for each price cut.

Because we humans are so fond of our judgment, and so overconfident in it, many of us, if not most, will be too quick to override the computers, even when their answer is better.

Getting rid of human judgments altogether—even those from highly experienced and credentialed people—and relying solely on numbers plugged into formulas, often yields better results.