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

"This clear-eyed, highly pragmatic call for embracing digital flexibility as foundational to business models strikes an ideal balance between forward-thinking boldness and breakdowns of established best practices. . . . Unbundling the Enterprise stands out for its practical clarity, especially when it comes to facing the certainty of uncertainty."
--Publisher's Weekly Booklife, Editor's Pick

Unbundling the Enterprise provides a blueprint for organizations to remain relevant and maximize growth in the digital economy by embracing the flexibility and optionality enabled by APIs.

Drawing on real-world examples of both innovative "digital pirates" and legacy "digital settlers," authors Stephen Fishman and Matt McLarty articulate strategies to unbundle business capabilities into reusable digital assets. These building blocks can then be rapidly combined and recombined to capitalize on new opportunities and innovations as they emerge.

For business and technology leaders, Unbundling the Enterprise provides an actionable methodology to engineer "happy accidents" and sustainable success in turbulent times. Underpinning their strategy are techniques tailored for digital business, like using APIs to create widespread optionality, designing digital business models focused on value exchange, and optimizing outcomes through tight feedback loops.

More than copying the superficial traits of digital pioneers, this book reveals the deeper mindset shift required to continually capitalize on unanticipated opportunities enabled by rapid technology innovation.

"Unbundling the Enterprise...blew me away. It is a combination of some of my favorite books: Dr. Carliss Baldwin's Design Rules and Eric Evans's Domain Driven Design with the strategic insights akin to Good to Great and Reengineering the Corporation."

--Gene Kim, researcher and bestselling author of The Phoenix Project and Wiring the Winning Organization