218  Blockchain

• Weaknesses: IOSpeed leadership was slow in adopting innovation and

to take proactive strategic measures to be competitive in the market.

As a result, business had an impact on revenue, staff turnover, and

also loss of a few loyal customers. Even after the leadership changes,

they still have some weaknesses that need to be taken into account

during strategy formulation.

Table 8.1  Michael Porter’s five forces strategic model

Strategic force

Stakeholders

Rating

Bargaining

power of

suppliers

Multiple NFT platform providers and more are upcoming and have

created and established platforms and products for NFTs. Some of

the examples of the NFT marketplace were discussed in Chapter 1.

The suppliers of the platform and also products to enable the

platform can have a high level of bargaining power.

HIGH

Bargaining

power of

buyers

Buyers of NFT platforms or services also have a high level of

bargaining power due to gaps in the maturity of the platform

and also risk of regulatory changes. Unless an organisation

create and manage their own NFT platform, they need to

select an appropriate platform provider and negotiate with

them. As discussed in Chapter 1, there are multiple providers

of NFT platforms, and the list is continuously growing. This

provides flexibility to the buyers with options. Creating our

own platform to establish an NFT-based art marketplace can

be expensive, so the organisation needs to decide on using the

available NFT platform or creating those on their own. This

decision needs to be based on risk and reward.

HIGH

Threat of new

entrants

Although not impossible, creating and managing NFT platforms is

very expensive. There are already multiple platforms like

Opensea.io, who have high adoption of customers using the

platform to buy/sell NFTs globally. It will be difficult for new

entrants to enter the market. IOSpeed will be classified as a new

entrant within the NFT market. We will discuss the best way to

disrupt the market as part of strategy formulation.

LOW

Threat of

substitute

products or

services

There are other products and platforms that can be used to

buy/sell art. The traditional digital channels based on the web/

mobile user interface and payment getaways to carry out

end-to-end transactions and transfer of the art work are still

well adopted. However, NFT provides additional features

against the traditional web-based platform to transact art

online. The threat of a substitute is therefore low. IOSpeed

needs to evaluate all options before executing on the most

appropriate solution.

LOW

Rivalry among

existing

competitors

Competition among suppliers of NFT platforms, products and

services is very HIGH. The market is already full of online digital

art marketplaces, and many more are launching NFT features.

The rivalry among existing competitors of NFT marketplaces is

high. IOSpeed needs to factor this during strategy formulation.

HIGH