⚡️A world without APIs is a world without Spotify, Facebook photos, Salesforce CRM, and Google search engine.⚡️

⚡️A world without APIs is a world without Spotify, Facebook photos, Salesforce CRM, and Google search engine. These and many other services we so often take for granted in our online lives would not be possible without the ability to access remote resources over HTTP. ⚡️

Only a handful of businesses seem to truly understand what an API is and why they are so essential to the digital economy.

The problem is that most product teams still cling to the misguided belief that an API is just another technology for building software when in fact, it's something much more than that: an essential by-product of modern business and commerce.

https://bit.ly/3GljDvV explains how APIs create business value.

Product teams must stop thinking about APIs as technology and start viewing them as by-products of modern businesses.

Check https://bit.ly/3vMMCne for an overview.

To understand why APIs are by-products, it helps to know that every company, regardless of size or industry, essentially exists for two purposes:

1. To deliver value to someone✨

2. To capture value from others✨

Businesses exist to facilitate the exchange of value between people and groups of people who wouldn't otherwise be able to engage in economic activity without the company's mediation.

Companies deliver value to their customers by enabling them to do or obtain things that would otherwise be difficult, expensive, or impossible if not for the company's existence and its products and services.

This is why firms go out of their way to create and come up with new ways to get more done quickly, more conveniently, like buying books on Amazon or lunch on mobiles.

Companies capture value from clients by taking some of the value they deliver back in exchange for their participation in this process.

Since more people are willing to part with their money for something they value than something they don't, companies that can successfully create more value than they capture end up reaping the benefits of their work in the form of profits.

While this may seem like an overly simplistic view of how businesses operate, it's pretty accurate (and arguably more nuanced than most people think).

The line between "creating value" and "capturing value" is typically blurred within companies that practice co-creation, for example.

Here, the value is not created and captured by a single company but through collaboration between consumers and companies (e.g., Nike+).

One of the most beneficial outcomes of this mode is that it makes APIs an essential by-product of any service or product central to a company's ability to create and capture value.

Here is a link to a resource on how to craft a product API strategy
https://bit.ly/3Cv82br

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