Be the Einstein of Infrastructure

Infrastructure as a competitive advantage is extremely powerful. From the roads of Ancient Rome to the server farms of Amazon, being the one with superior infrastructure allows you to do things that others can’t.

Dictionaries define infrastructure as the basic, underlying framework and fundamental facilities of a system. I like to define infrastructure as the enabler of choice and opportunity. Tech giants like Google and Amazon have spent years to build up their infrastructure and are now able to use it to capture and create new markets that no other company can.

Infrastructure isn’t really about focus. Most new products can and should be built on top of existing infrastructure. Traditionally infrastructure is something you aggregate with your first product and then use for the second, third and fourth products. Infrastructure is the signature of an enduring business.

The brute force strategy to gaining the advantage over infrastructure is just figuring out what is it that — with enough resources — you could have more of than anybody else does. Servers are taken. Social network and search data is taken. There isn’t actually many things left that someone else isn’t already focused on hoarding.

Amazon accumulated infrastructure over the years until it was was suddenly able to capture the cloud computing markets. Amazon’s recent acquisition of Whole Foods for $13.4 Billion massively extends their infrastructure and is perhaps the ultimate example of infrastructure hoarding.

In few years Albert Einstein created the infrastructure that has supported the most of modern physics for the last century, all while working in a patent office. Infrastructure doesn’t necessarily have to be about scale, mass and quantity. Infrastructure can also be about simplicity and elegance.

The Art of Walking Backwards

Einstein kept on taking steps back and questioning the pillars of (then) modern physics. When designing elegant infrastructure you too need to question and redefine the pillars that define your landscape. After you have considered things like the cloud (blockchain), hardware (Facebook’s virtual devices), roads (Amazon’s drones) and flesh-based humans (Neuralink) a thing of the future past, you start breaking new ground.

Finding the pillars that need redefinition can sometimes be hard as they are hiding in the plain sight. We for example think, that gas stations are somehow relevant to the generalization of electric cars. The Finnish government is even planning to subsidise the installation of charging points to all gas stations. We think that gas stations are a fundamental pillar of cars, while they actually are only a pillar of combustion engines. The ideal place for a charging point is where there is a lot of electricity and a good way to spend 30 minutes, not fuel tanks. (credit to Osmo Soininvaara for this observation).

Elegant infrastructure often has some aspects of unification in it. Special Theory of Relativity unified space and time and the unproven Grand Unified Theory is rather self-explanatory in its mission. Recent innovations in cloud infrastructure are about small, equivalent units taking care of multiple diverse tasks: microservices and lambdas are like atoms and quarks of the cloud. Smartphone unified almost everything digital in our lives and AirBnB treats hosts and guests equally through a unified platform.

Finally, elegant infrastructure drives entirely different behaviour and thinking. This is perhaps the feature that sets elegant infrastructure apart from hoarded one and gives it its competitive power. The infrastructure isn’t necessarily items, or even code. When seen as the enabler of choice and opportunity, the new thinking can in itself be the new infrastructure — like open-source software or sharing economy.

Leveling the playing field

Infrastructure founded on simplicity and elegance doesn’t automatically grant you the same advantages that hoarded infrastructure does. You are not years and billions of dollars ahead of your competition. Fundamental and abstract ideas can’t be patented as they are essentially discovered, not invented. Software and algorithms that don’t outright contain an industrial application are not usually eligible for patent protection at all.

Remember, that you don’t design your infrastructure only for what you do, but for what you could do. Your infrastructure shouldn’t serve only a single application. The essence of your infrastructure should be fundamental and as such fall into the category of unpatentable.

What your infrastructure is capable of doing is to create a conflict of interest — a dilemma — for your competition. You change the dynamics of the markets and your competition has to adapt. Should the oil companies promote electric vehicles and hurt the primary purpose of their gas stations, or lose money in short term by installing charging points and strengthening the electric grid in order to keep their stations relevant? You have an advantage over your competition when they are struggling to solve a new dynamic that you were born into.

You and your new, elegant infrastructure are the underdogs. You haven’t proven that your idea is going to change the world. The more your competitors have invested into hoarding infrastructure, the less willing they are to believe that it ever will. Until it does.

Ville Topias Ilkkala

Written by

I work with companies, universities, research groups, nonprofits and foundations towards a digitally transformed society. I’m the co-founder and CTO of Valaa.

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