Where does envelopment collide?

In operations research, envelopment names the geometry at the heart of Data Envelopment Analysis, a method that measures the relative efficiency of comparable decision-making units by constructing a piecewise-linear frontier that envelops all observed input–output combinations. Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes's 1978 Measuring the efficiency of decision making units introduced the approach, scoring each unit by its distance from the enveloping efficient surface. The referent is an efficiency frontier that wraps a cloud of data, a formal-analytic construct that shares only the word with a flanking attack or a market-absorbing platform.[1]

Unit

A unit's efficiency score relative to the frontier that envelops the observed data

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Computed by linear programming as each unit's distance from the enveloping efficient frontier

In platform strategy, envelopment is the move by which a provider in one market enters an adjacent platform's market by bundling its own functionality, leveraging a shared user base to absorb the target's demand. Eisenmann, Parker, and Van Alstyne's 2011 Platform envelopment set out how overlapping users and economies of scope let one platform fold a neighbouring one into its offering. The referent is a competitive strategy of market absorption through bundling, borrowing the military image of surrounding a target but denoting a distinct economic construct, not a frontier over data or a flanking attack on a battlefield.[2]

Unit

The extent to which a platform captures an adjacent market by bundling into its user base

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Examined through user-base overlap, bundling moves, and shifts in share across the enveloped market