Unbundling the Enterprise: APIs, 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

Stephen Fishman (Fish) is the NA Field CTO for Boomi. He is a practicing technologist who brings creativity, rigor, and a human-centric lens to problem-solving. Known as an expert in aligning technology and business strategy, Stephen places a premium on pushing business and technology leaders to embrace iteration and the critical need to collaborate across disciplines. Throughout his career, Stephen has consulted with organizations desiring to transform their technology-based offerings to better meet the needs of organizations and the people they serve. In addition to consulting with large organizations, Stephen is an in-demand speaker and advisor. Stephen has led multidisciplinary teams to deliver amazing results at Salesforce, MuleSoft, Cox Automotive, Sapient, Macy's, and multiple public sector institutions, including the US Federal Reserve and the CDC. He lives in Atlanta with his family, and when he's not working, he can be found biking on the many trails in Georgia.

Matt McLarty is the Chief Technology Officer for Boomi. He works with organizations worldwide to help them digitally transform using a composable approach. He is an active member of the global API community, has led global technical teams at Salesforce, IBM, and CA Technologies, and started his career in financial technology. Matt is an internationally known expert on APIs, microservices, and integration. He is coauthor of the O'Reilly books Microservice Architecture and Securing Microservice APIs and co-host of the API Experience podcast. He lives with his wife and two sons in Vancouver, BC.