Digital Public Infrastructure // Beyond Sectors // On-Chain Value Vectors // Bundling Products
Dear readers,
Welcome back to our?Boundaryless?Dispatch. A fortnightly update where we connect the?trends?we spot, the?patterns?we identify,?and research threads from our backstage.
This dispatch is also available as the opening of our official newsletter?The Rules of the Platform Game?where you can also find 10-ish curated reads, videos, and podcasts with comments that you should really not miss every two weeks.
Subscribe to the full newsletter?if you also want to access the curated links list in an organized way, and other perks. You can also receive our curated links daily by joining our?public telegram group!
So refreshing to be back at full-throttle podcasting: in recent weeks we have been enriched with insightful dialogues that have further broadened our understanding of the dynamic innovation landscape.
A recent highlight certainly was our podcast recording with Dr. Arvind Gupta , the co-founder and head of Digital India Foundation (among many other things).
Our discussion ventured into the transformative potential of Digital Public Infrastructures (DPIs) in reshaping markets and reducing the reliance on centralized platforms. This conversation has been particularly enlightening as we continue to look beyond traditional sector boundaries, exploring the confluence of public, private, and the evolving open sector, represented by open standards and initiatives in the digital commons.
If you're curious of the role of DPIs report from UNDP in collaboration with Indian G20 presidency: "Accelerating The SDGs Through Digital Public Infrastructure: A Compendium of The Potential of Digital Public Infrastructure"
This link among others was featured in our recent full newsletter release - subscribe here.
In another stimulating podcast, we were joined by Giulio Quaggiotto and Millie Begovic , the former and current Heads of Strategic Innovation at 联合国开发计划署 , respectively. Our discourse revolved around portfolio approaches to systemic innovation.
Despite their primary focus on development, the approaches Giulio and Millie shared in weaving systemic innovations resonated deeply with us, presenting a wealth of inspiration for the private sector. Their work showcased the potential in projects where multiple actors co-invest to generate transformative impacts, transcending conventional product or service offerings.
Stay tuned for future podcast releases! There’s also a surprise coming up: we’ve introduced special episodes that will be released on an emergent schedule to bring you topics that are unusual but important for your understanding - we'll call these episodes “Beyond frames” …first is coming up soon!
Product-Centric Organizations (Portfolios, Taxonomies) with Craig Strong
In this recent pisode, we explored what a product-centric organization looks like, with our guest Craig Strong . Sharing his experience from being a Global Practice Leader at Amazon Web Services (AWS) , a seasoned Chief Technology & Product Officer, he helps us dive deeper into the nuances of adopting organizational designs, cultures, and practices that cater to product-customer centricity.?
A true product operating model specialist, he has helped countless startups and enterprises to modernize and evolve to become more customer-centric. From bio-mimicry to hands-on experience, learn what inspires him every day, to design some of the most robust and adopted organization structures in the world. This podcast is just not one to miss!
Key Points we cover:
?? Importance of timely contextualization, innovation, and autonomy in ideas.
?? Relevance of incremental governance
?? Removal of “Rigidity of Frameworks”?
?? Creating a balance between the heuristics and cultural tenets of an organization
?? Complete breakdown of product taxonomies - its necessity, importance, design structure, etc.
?? How to build collective intelligence in organizations
?? How to use visualization tools for imagining and executing dynamic organization design
On-chain Exploration
In our quest for innovation, a collaboration with a client led us to experiment with the potential of adopting an "on-chain" approach leveraging blockchain technology and cryptographic design patterns. This endeavor materialized into the creation of the Blockchain Benefit Opportunity Explorer: check it out here.
Consider this a prototype: it’s being developed in collaboration between Simone from Boundaryless and Justice Conder from Polygon.
This tool, although in its draft phase, is a step towards understanding the value vectors of transitioning projects on-chain. We release this work with an open invitation for feedback and suggestions, encouraging anyone interested to download the prototype, explore its utility for their projects, and contribute to its evolution.
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Bridging Methodologies
On another front, we are engaged in composing a piece that seeks to connect the dots between the RenDanHeyi, our 3EO Framework implementation, and the Viable System Model (VSM), while also reflecting on some of the widely adopted Agile at Scale practices. This initiative mirrors our ongoing effort to amalgamate diverse methodologies, fostering a space of organizational agility and resilience.
Our journey is continually enriched by collaborative endeavors and open dialogues, laying the foundations for a fertile ecosystem of knowledge and innovation. As we advance, we look forward to sharing more of our findings and explorations.
Multi-Product Portfolios: Creating Bundles and DIY Platforms
In one of the latest articles we released on the blog, we approached the role that taxonomies have in ensuring that both customers and teams can interact and develop a coherent set of services and products.
There are numerous use cases of application of such techniques: multi-product is the new vogue and rightly so, the cost to build services and products in the digital space is ever smaller thanks to advances in software and - after an age of large horizontal products - markets are now expecting more variety, modularity, and composability to fill the remaining niches.
Multi-product coordination can also be a real deal in organizational ecosystems, for example, those that emerge from M&A, strategic venture-building investments, venture-studio initiatives, and more, all on the rise as a pattern in the market.
Even in the context of social development, we have seen systemic approaches emerge that even overcame the private sector for their capabilities to capture nuance and deal with complexity.
In the article, we give a framing of the work one has to do to build a portfolio of products with a focus on how products bundle together. Beyond the benefits that a product taxonomy will give (something we covered in a recent article) we share a way to keep a product portfolio structure and taxonony as outside-in as possible and we’ll make sure to share all the points of view one has to entertain as one embarks on a complex journey.
Understand the market
Developing a portfolio approach to product and service development starts from understanding the market. Portfolio approaches give the possibility to tackle a set of coordinated options in parallel, they reduce risk and introduce optionality, and require therefore not only a deep understanding of customers and their pains and gains but a more systemic understanding of all the interactions that happen in the ecosystem and of the role being played.
This is something that we tend to do at Boundaryless by using Arena Maps and Ecosystem Scans - in ways we’ve introduced already. The language of “arenas” was introduced to break down the complexity of a large ecosystem and comes in handy when approaching the market with a portfolio posture: often arena maps also provide a good starting point for defining “product areas” or similar concepts.
Read the rest of the article on our blog, to discover the various ways to facilitate product bundling and empower customers to choose what products they want to use.
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Work with us
Boundaryless provides on-demand consulting services with an iterative and outcome-based approach. We iterate fast and produce results quickly. We work with organizations of all kinds, from Fortune 500 to small startups, and even the UN!?
For?startup or project teams, we help with:
For?larger companies?that are a bit more mature, we also work on:
Are you facing these and other challenges? Let's discuss how we can help:?