Four Key Highlights
Digital building blocks are standardized and modular units of value creation, which, when combined, have the power to drive exponential value creation in an ecosystem.
Building blocks should be usable as a component across multiple solutions, be able to coexist with prevailing solutions and be a part of an ever-increasing library
Three key factors that play a vital role in devising a building blocks approach are: high cross- leverage, low coordination costs and high reusability
The power of open software and modularity across the value chain will drive the rise of the building blocks approach over the coming decade.
Key Tenets of The Building Blocks Thesis
Solutions are developed and consumed as bundles of value. The building blocks approach unbundles a solution into its core building blocks and re-bundles these blocks into diverse solutions.
A building blocks approach starts with the universe of possible solutions and determines the common fundamental elements that constitute such solutions. It then goes about standardizing these fundamental elements and commoditizing them. This enables an ecosystem of actors who have the agency to ‘build-on’ using these building blocks to deploy solutions across varied contexts. A building blocks approach allows the ecosystem to build context-specific solutions (which preserve individual context) while leveraging standardized solution components (building blocks).
A building blocks approach acknowledges that certain large-scale problems cannot be solved through central solution design and closed innovation. Instead, these problems require distributed solutioning through empowerment of a large and loosely connected ecosystem of actors.
Building blocks should have three key characteristics: They are usable as a component across multiple solutions, they may be combined with complements and existing solutions to create new solution bundles, and builders may benefit from an ever-increasing library of building blocks that all adhere to common standards and specifications.
Digital building blocks are powerful agents of solutioning. Like physical building blocks, they are standardized and modular and may be recombined to create new solutions (think Lego or Tetris). Unlike physical building blocks, they are also (1) reusable owing to near-zero costs of replication, (2) agents of coordination, as standards and specifications enable interoperability and coordination across larger solution systems.
Digital building blocks enable a ‘system of solutions’, that are interoperable and can plug-and-play across each other, enabling a vast and seemingly unconnected ecosystem of solution creators to more effectively coordinate their efforts towards solving large-scale problems through diverse context-rich solutions.
Every solution builder can contribute to the universe of open, public digital building blocks (unbundling), and can leverage existing building blocks to create new solutions (re-bundling). The resultant public library of components and complements create powerful universal network effects across the universe of building blocks, rather than within the boundaries of a particular solution.
Building blocks when deployed as public goods enable shared ownership of solutioning infrastructure, leading to a ‘winners-share-all’ dynamic. As the ecosystem builds new building blocks, all participants benefit through reuse and cross-leverage. Essentially, the entire lego set wins, not the builder or the sponsor alone, by enabling ‘build-on’, rather than ‘rebuild’.
A building block approach can transform value creation in an increasingly connected, and complex world with rapidly evolving technology and intertwined ecosystems. Much as platforms resolve the scale-choice trade-off and the scale-quality trade-off, a building blocks approach can resolve the scale-context trade-off and the scale-agency trade-off .
Design Your
Ecosystem Strategy
- Leverage the power of open software and modular ecosystems
- Drive solutioning and innovation through unbundling and re-bundling
- Gain the benefits of decentralization with a building blocks approach
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