APIs and business ecosystems

APIs, Driving Force of Business Ecosystems

Stijn Decneut

CTO

lean & agile coach

lean systems thinking agile principles

organisation and architecture

we are service designers

we help organisations improve their service delivery

and translate it to a digital offering

from a user-driven perspective

we are agile and lean

we help our customers understand the benefits of agile

and lean thinking in their organisation. we assist them

with implementing the techniques and adopting an

agile culture.

Things that keep me up at night.

Technology is the answer, but what was the question?

Just because you build it does not mean someone will use it.

VALIDITY'business value'

FEASIBILITY‘architecture’ and

‘organisation’

DESIRABILITY'user needs'

VALUE CREATION

VALIDITY'business value'

DESIRABILITY'user needs'

User Experience Design

Value Proposition Design

SERVICE DESIGN

THINKING

Lean Startup Thinking

Adapt to unsure market demand Anticipate changing user desiresRelease early & oftenVolatile technology

FEASIBILITY‘architecture’ and

‘organisation’

EfficiencyReliabilityCost ControlOperational excellence

Enterprise Architecture

ESB & SOA

Long life cyclesStable technologyRigid deploymentTied to organisationChanges have huge impact

FEASIBILITY‘architecture’ and

‘organisation’

VALIDITY'business value'

DESIRABILITY'user needs'

DRIFT

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Bi-modal IT, remember?

My interpretation of APIs.

@geeks

- RESTful, > L2 on Richardson Maturity Model.- JSON, or simple XML- HAL/JSON-LD/… maybe

APIs apply proven www practices to machine-to-machine interactions.

App - CMS

Website - Backend System

Wearable - Cloud Service … - …

APIs apply proven www practices to machine-to-machine interactions.

Few and simple standardsDistributed infrastructureNo central controlUser-drivenCommunity-drivenConvention-driven

APIs apply proven www practices to machine-to-machine interactions.

APIs bring proven www practices to enterprise environments.

Yeah we have SOAP web services, WS-extensions and even an ESB!

Nothing new, right?

Not exactly…

Few and simple standardsDistributed infrastructureNo central controlUser-drivenCommunity-drivenConvention-driven!

Popular API Design Principles

> design outside-in, prototype and co-create

> strict separation of concerns

> no surprises: convention-driven

> low learning curve: live documentation, dev. portal

> predictable & reliable: manage like a website

- policies: throttling, authentication, ...

- analytics, traffic monitoring, ...

Source: http://www.google.com/trends/

VALIDITY'business value'

DESIRABILITY'user needs'

Platform

CORE ASSETS & CAPABILITIES

FEASIBILITY‘architecture’ and

‘organisation’

BUSINESS CONTEXT

Meet zapier.com

Meet ifttt.com's Do

Everytime valuable technology becomes convenient,

exciting things happen.

Commercial air travel.

~1940

Public GPS signals.

~1985

API-powered Business Ecosystems.

~2010

In a Business Ecosystem, companies work cooperatively and

competitively to support new products, satisfy customer needs,

and eventually incorporate the next round of innovations.

- J. Moore, 1993, HBR

Business Ecosystems are not new.

Governors of the Wine Merchant’s Guild. Ferdinand Bol, 1663.

APIs make interconnecting systems as convenient as browsing a website.

Accelerators of Business Ecosystems

Digitisation Connectivity Co-creationCollaboration

It has never been more desirable and more convenient for businesses to

cooperate and to compete.

APIs, The Driving Force of Business Ecosystems

stijn@trilean.be