My Thoughts on Unbundling the Enterprise

We’re living in the middle of the digital era. Information exchange has never been more convenient, and AI is on the rise, thanks to recent accomplishments by OpenAI with ChatGPT and other LLMs. The rate at which the Internet (and overall access to information) is expanding is not slowing down. No one really expected the Internet to become so popular at the beginning of the 21st century when it was in its infancy. And of course, no one foresaw the implications the Internet would have on businesses.

Throughout the years, we have witnessed how technology has changed the way we communicate and interact with the world. The landscape has significantly shifted, and we’ve seen how some businesses failed to adapt and are now fading into obscurity. On the other hand, this new landscape has unlocked new possibilities.

Unbundling the Enterprise offers an interesting look at this change and how to navigate it. Not only that, but the book provides good advice on how to trigger happy accidents and thrive. There are many concepts revolving around experimentation, prototyping, and discovery. These concepts and their importance are explained via three methods, dubbed as OOOPs — creating optionality through unbundled APIs, identifying opportunities through value dynamics, and driving optimization through feedback loops. There are also many examples of how these methods were adopted by companies like Amazon and Google.

I appreciated the perspective and explanation of concepts I know and have experience with. The book offers great advice, and I recommend it not only to business-oriented people within companies but also to developers. The authors nailed the language, making the book fully understandable to both groups, which are often separated in understanding. Although the main theme of the book is the transformation to a digital landscape, many digitally-oriented businesses still lack many practices described here.

The advice offered here is no snake oil. It provides a practical overview of practices that can lead to great results. It’s not a step-by-step tutorial or a remedy for how to tame technology. Transformations are difficult. There will be mistakes. It might get painful. But there are ways to leverage all that and transform it into results. The introduced concepts can be studied separately, and knowledge can be built upon the learnings from this book.

This is a great read for a wide audience — software developers, business executives, or anyone who works for a digitally-oriented business or even a traditional business that needs to transform and adapt to the digital era.