Design economics of product platforms for enterprise sustainability towards mass customization

Being customer centric and producing only what customers really want are considered as a foremost means to increase both financial and economical sustainability for an enterprise. Developing multiple product variants based on product families sharing common platforms has been well recognized as an effective means to cater for product variety while maintaining mass production efficiencies. It provides an important input for increasing the sustainability of value creation along the entire enterprise value chain. Consistent with the options thinking, this paper outlines a research agenda of real option theoretic financial analysis models for product platforms by identifying product variety-related real options.