The Power of the API Economy: Rethinking Disruption and Becoming a Digital Business

The API Economy is key to accelerating business value by uncovering more profitable opportunities, reaching more profitable customers, and establishing more profitable partnerships. The cloud, ubiquitous mobility, Big Data analytics, the Internet of Things, software defined networking, and social platforms are fueling the hyper-growth of API-centric, business-as-a-service economies, in which entire businesses are digitized, and entirely new forms of business and consumer interaction emerge. Using these technologies, you can become easier to do business with, foster new channels, reach new markets, and radically improve your ability to collaborate. To achieve these goals, you must understand powerful new market dynamics, important ways in which your customers' lives are changing, and radically new technologies. But understanding isn't enough: you must plan and execute an effective response. In The Power of the API Economy, IBM Fellow Kerrie Holley covers all of this: ideas, implications, roadmaps, and execution. Holley demystifies both the technological and business trends driving the API economy, and offers a complete action plan for leveraging its torrent of new opportunities (and managing its many new risks). He offers clear, practical answers to key questions such as: * What is the "API economy," and why should I care? * How are digital platforms transforming business ecosystems, interactions, and my customers' lives and expectations? * Which of my offerings are threatened most immediately, and what should I do? * How can I use APIs to innovative at the speed of cloud and Internet-era companies - and create value at the same speed? * How can I drive strategic advantage from "purpose-driven platforms" such as Facebook, Salesforce, iTunes, and Amazon? * What happens when everyone's engaged with everything, and everyone's both a partner and a competitor? * What do I do now? How will I know if it's working? Whether you're a CxO-level executive, line-of-business leader, technologist, strategist, marketer, or consultant, The Power of the API Economy will help you capture value and serve customers in ways you could have never imagined before -- because, until now, they simply didn't exist!