Unbundling the Enterprise: Apis, Optionality, and the Science of Happy Accidents

The future of business is digital, yet most organizations (including many with high-tech origins) are struggling to adapt despite high levels of planning and multiyear investments. As it turns out, the key to digital transformation is hidden in plain sight -- Stop trying to predict the future. Instead, create the conditions for unanticipated innovations (AKA "happy accidents") to occur and then rapidly exploit them. APIs and optionality are what make this path possible. Unbundling the Enterprise provides a blueprint--proven but until now unarticulated--on how to architect your business for success in the digital economy. In this book, you will learn the power of using APIs to unlock your organization's existing business capabilities to accumulate optionality, and how that optionality can drive innovation and create new organic growth inside of your enterprise. In Unbundling the Enterprise, digital strategists Matt McLarty and Stephen Fishman document the insights they have gained from speaking with business and IT leaders at digital native companies like Amazon, Google, and Slack, as well as with established enterprises like Cox Automotive, Best Buy, and Coca Cola. By reading this book, you will see the landscape of digital business in a whole new way, and be able to apply what you've learned through its practical methods. You will be ready to take a compelling new model for creating impactful innovation into your enterprise and take advantage of all those happy accidents waiting to happen.