Diversity of X in XaaS
summary
Argues that XaaS is a cyclical slice-and-bundle dynamic driven by transaction costs and enabled by tech shifts, tracing examples from turbine hours as a service and house rental to streaming unbundling and rebundling, and citing a 2016 failure caused by an 11-line npm package that reveals network fragility. Links multiplexing to subscription slicing, maps market complexity to product modularity via the law of requisite variety and Conways law, shows microservices/containers as an architecture match, and uses betweenness centrality to explain platform power.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:07Slicing and bundling in XaaS
- 2:32Transaction costs in cyclical models
- 3:35Historical examples of XaaS
- 4:38Freelancing and decentralized orgs
- 5:20Blockchain and trust as a service
- 6:24Networks vs hierarchies in markets
- 8:09Network structure and ecosystem health
- 10:38Too central to fail
- 10:59Multiplexing and product architecture
- 12:23Market structure and org design
- 13:24Holacracy and team topologies
- 14:05Microservices and container shipping
- 14:48Closing thoughts and frames to consider
