Openness Can Be a Problem in Cross-Domain API Economy Community

Sometimes even a super great intention can be at the same time quite a harmful showstopper just because the intention shows only one side of the whole picture. In the previous blog we embraced the Openness, but surprisingly the Openness can turn against itself and can accidentally slow down the progress in an API Economy Community. Why? How to overcome?

Domain Expertise

Many domains, be it Construction, Real Estate, Transportation, Energy, Software, Hardware, etc, have written or unwritten principles for common ways of doing things. People are committed in such principles to form a smoothly working domain. The principles are sometimes documented e.g. in specifications, definitions or even manifestos. Many times this is not enough, but people must have a pretty good domain knowledge in order to understand what the common way really means.

People get easily confused in cross-domain discussion. This confusion can be avoided.

Domain experts have excellent knowledge of their domains including deep understanding on the main principles to be applied. In general, people are dedicated to one domain, rather that being an expert of many domains. This is a simple consequence of development in every domain at the same time. When one focuses on a new domain to learn about it, it takes time and energy to become an expert. Once the person becomes an expert in such new domain, after perhaps some years, the other domains has evolved even quite a bit. Being expert in many of domain is demanding. Such people eventually become generalists, which is not a bad idea either, but they are not an expert of any domain anymore. This is the trade-off one has to accept by choosing a path of generalist.

Cross-Domain Community

Having common problems, people get together from their domains as equal members to form a cross-domain Community. In their cross-domain discussion people share concerns and bring their domain expertise to the Community.

Sometimes people might expect that everybody knows the principles of their domain because the domain is so “well-known”. Fail. They don’t know. They wouldn’t know the vocabulary or jargon. This is a general problem. The others don’t know the basic assumptions. They wouldn’t have the tacit knowledge.

Sometime people might unintentionally use their domain expertise to hijack the lead within the cross-domain Community. This act might feel as a sense of responsibility to take the Community forward, but as a matter of fact the others might feel themselves a little bit dummies. Hangarounders, which they don’t want to be. The discussion focus point might become biased towards the master domain, which loses further the connection with the others. People become reluctant to participate and finally feel disconnected from the Community.

People just don’t have resource, time, capacity, motivation to become domain experts of every domain. Domain-biased culture would be a big problem for cross-domain collaboration. Connection among the domains should be equally balanced.

as we remember the common understanding must be agreed together

Not to blame anyone, because we all are grown in our special environments. Mostly our intentions are good. Also we underestimate ourselves, and don’t always know how good experts we are within our own domain. Sometimes we overestimate ourselves, too. Adjusting to balanced mode is difficult! Confusions just happen. What we need to do in cross-domain environment is to tolerate differences, be open, and learn the right level of discussion to go forward together as one. To choose a simple common vocabulary is very important.

Common themes don’t make a difference

Another source of confusion comes from the common themes. The title of theme is not enough to justify that the themes would be common. They usually have a domain specific interpretation to make themes actually quite different from each others.

Let’s take the Openness as an example. The general principle is the same, to be open. However, as we remember the common understanding must be agreed together. Otherwise the understanding is not a common. What it really means to be open and in which way to be open. Such agreement is done on domain basis together with other experts of the domain. This requires a deep domain knowledge, to really really understand what the Openness means for the domain in question.

The same thing is done inside of each domains. The Openness is tailored independently across all the domains, so the openness starts to vary, even a lot, among each others, because the interpretations are domain specifics. In the end the Openness means different things for different domains. This is meaningful for the needs of the domains, but it is a waste of time to try to harmonize that for cross-domain Community use. There is not need to take those principles with, because every domain work automatically according their principles for the Openness even without having it in the Community talks.

Therefore seemingly common principles, like Openness, should be left outside from the cross-domain discussion.

Jump out

The discussion should be lifted up to more generic level to share the thoughts faster without deep domain knowledge. People should entirely jump out from their sweet home domains to the common ground in the cross-domain API Economy Community and leave their domain specifics behind from all the discussions. No matter how important and great, or even seemingly common themes might be left behind. Yes, this applies also to the Openness for the obvious reasons. It is much better not to trying to make the others the experts of your domain.

To leave out the domain specifics is only a rational temporary move to engage people and integrate the Community to collaborate better together. When you get back to the sweet home domain, Gosh, that joy and happiness when you are again able to share your thoughts with the dearest domain-specific jargon!

Cross-domain Community talks

We execute our daily work inside our own domain. It is very human and understandable to define the scope around the same domain only. That makes us efficient. We easily forget that everybody are not knowledgeable of our domain, but they are surprising strangers, even they might be super expert of their own domain. Just generalize your talks to simple Community talks.

While moving back and forth between the Domain and the Community the line of comfort zone is grossed each time. Learning and applying new knowledge is there outside in the cross-domain Community. Enjoy your growth with cross-domain Communities!

Embracing the openness of API Economy in the previous blog, and by making some observations to improve cross-domain discussion in this blog, the next blog will invite to participate the API Economy with simple talk.

Writer is an Apitalist of APInf Oy, helping organizations to participate in API Economy, as well as API and Application developers come together around API Management platforms to standardize APIs of the World.