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The art of APIs
A lot of the innovation development and thought leadership work I’ve been doing with clients in recent years has been built around the basic premise (assumption?) of digital interconnectivity and the easy, low-cost scalability and exponential growth this supposedly makes possible. It’s a great/inspirational story, and many a bestselling business book has been birthed on these grandiloquent themes.
Reality check
But then I get back to the office, and get a cold-shower reminder about practical realities – that probably 90% of day-to-day corporate communication seems largely stuck in the Microsoft trifecta dungeon of Word, Excel and creaking old Explorer, in a universe of bulging email chains and attachments ad libitum.
Yes, they may have fancy tools in the R&D department, good CRM backbones and barcode-enabled logistics chains, but collaborative working and dreams of seamless digital connectivity and interactive data flows certainly aren’t an obvious feature of less exotic business life. Realities aren’t quite as squeaky shiny as Harvard Business Review Press would have us think.
Bold API ambitions
I started thinking about this after a chance encounter with a company that put this connectivity dead centre in its market communication. Swedish IT company Fourmation makes a bold start to the company’s website, with inspirational proclamations about living in a connected world, and their products/services helping to enable this wonderful thing.
Yeps, they’re talking about the once-lowly Application Programming Interface (API). Fourmation points out that APIs are drivers for new innovation, enabling the connected world and bringing data to life.
We make information come to life
Hooks hidden in plain sight
Perspective, perspective
The thing is that these APIs are rarely packaged as products in themselves. They’re not usually in the spotlight or even called by their true names, and we mere mortals never see them, or really appreciate the full impact of their “enabler” capabilities. For many companies, they’re simply a necessary cost of doing business and linking into the whole digital ecosystem.
Once upon a time, product-centric software companies did tell us that there are APIs available that would enable us to do more with their digital product. But it was almost always peripheral, a gateway to nerdland, almost a throw-away item of extra information. Their presentations of APIs were always based in their one particular tiny piece of the software jigsaw, telling us that we were welcome to battle with the bigger picture, should we be so bold, needy or inclined. APIs were peripheral to the main gig.
But now it seems that the tail might be ready to wag the dog.
Visible API artistry wanted
There’s a need for API artists and equilibrists to focus on the real value and significance of what they can do, instead of the usual/natural preoccupation with who or what they are, or how they do it. One company that seems to have really “got” this, and markets it well, is Segment. They talk about being the infrastructure for customer data, and cleverly claim that they “unblock” the data essential for growth, revenue and good customer relations. Their “integrator” API seems to pave the way to new agendas and capabilities about adjusting integration configurations without needing slow, costly developer involvement.
This is a rethink of the infrastructure for our digital lives and business prosperity – with exciting perspectives.
