Bridging Emergent Tech to Business Value
Product Reflections from the Fall 2019 Internet Identity Workshop
The Fall 2019 Internet Identity Workshop brought together technical and business people from around the world to talk about trends and challenges in emerging identity technology. Decentralized identities (DID) and verifiable credentials (VC) were popular topics due to the number of attendees building in the space. While the technical standards of DIDs and VCs are still being formalized, the business value proposition is notably earlier still in its development.
Recognizing this issue, a group of thirty or so product managers, designers, and business strategists gathered on the last day of IIW to talk through shared challenges and insights. Prevailing in the room were equal parts sympathetic camaraderie and clear consensus that the time is right to come together around the commercial value of our work.
Put plainly, we are collectively searching for language and evidence to cross the chasm from technical novelty to core business infrastructure.
While our respective companies see the revolutionary potential of this technology, our logic is not yet making it through to our prospective customers, leaving us unable to move from proof of concept to production. And, without wider adoption there is no revolution (or revenue).
The group identified the need for less technical yet precise business language, particularly around distinct value propositions related to security, privacy, consent, regulatory compliance and business process optimization. We also discussed the need for a clearer enterprise adoption story, including digestible integration points and pricing models.
While we came out with more questions than answers, there was shared agreement that collaboration between our companies and continued testing and refinement of value propositions is critical for mass adoption. Ultimately, we will grow or flounder together as an industry.
In reflecting upon this session and surrounding conversations, I’ve found myself thinking about the process of building of a suspension bridge. If you have ever crossed such a bridge you may have experienced that moment of awe wondering how on earth such an engineering marvel could have been achieved.
Last summer I felt this while standing in the middle of the bridge spanning the the Royal Gorge in Colorado. Originally built in 1929, it was the highest suspension bridge in the world for almost a century, linking one side of the Gorge to the other. The bridge was built by lowering cables from towers on either side of the gorge, and then joining them together at the bottom banks of the Arkansas River about one thousand feet below. Workers then rode in a tiny trolley car back and forth across the gorge, progressively weaving an additional 2,100 wires into thick cables that eventually supported the full bridge.
Connecting decentralized identity technology with companies and consumers feels a lot like building a suspension bridge over a massive canyon. We are still in the early days of creating and casting the first cables down from each side of the divide, seeing if and where we are able to join them.
Admittedly, there are more connections originating from the decentralized tech side at this time because that is where many of us are building from and taking technology to market. However the entry of standards bodies like GS1 and IAB as well as larger organizations including Workday, T-mobile, Mastercard, Microsoft, multiple airlines and many federal governments (Examples include Canada, United States, Spain, Estonia, Bermuda, South Korea) has accelerated connection from the customer’s side. We can see promising links emerge, particularly around supply chain traceability, financial services, educational credentials, and national identification.
A key role of product and business people in this space is working together at the bottom of the gorge — testing and creatively joining these cables — and sharing back to parties on both sides. This is no simple task, as the possibilities and limitations of DID and VC technology are only just being discovered.
Sometimes this process feels isolating, murky, and frustrating (as I imagine toiling down in the Arkansas river in 1929 felt to those builders). However this difficult work has the potential to create structures far stronger than we may yet imagine.
Building alone? Join the Product Community of Practice hosted by the Decentralized Identity Foundation.
