They are building a digital ecosystem. And what are we building?

It was ten years ago this year that The Wall Street Journal published “Why does software eat the world?” emblematic article in which the author predicted the future belongs to next-generation technology companies. The author of the article is Marc Andreessen, one of the world’s best-known venture capitalists, who typically invests with good sense in early-stage, promising companies such as Airbnb, Facebook, Skype, or Groupon. Its portfolio also includes some of the world’s best-known fintech companies, such as Stripe, (Transfer) Wise, Coinbase, Robinhood, or Buy Now, one of the pioneers of Buy Later, Affirm. ten years ago, Andreessen said, “the next ten years will be about creative destruction, with fierce battles between incumbents and software companies.” His expectations were typically met by 2021, and as he predicted, cloud-based services exploded, image recognition and artificial intelligence came into tangible proximity and paved the way for the future of self-driving cars. The winds of cryptocurrencies have also hit central banks, launching digital central bank money projects in a row. The tough battle Andreessen had expected between the incumbents and the software companies was only partially fulfilled – at least in the financial industry. The bank-fintech “battle” has typically evolved into a partnership these days, but on the horizon there are BigTech companies marching step-by-step toward the financial industry. It is true that they do not want to become a bank for the time being, but it is also becoming increasingly clear that in their digital ecosystem, banks can only be second fiddlers. In the year before the pandemic broke out, in 2019, the World Economic Forum put it this way, digital technologies no longer just provide an opportunity to more effectively create new products, services, a higher level of customer experience, or automated processes. With digital technologies, we can even reinterpret the way our industry works and create a new business ecosystem. Digital ecosystems, which are ourselves at the origin of
, are moving into our personal living space, and the circulation between the individual components is ensured by the data we collect about us. The data create the potential for hyperpersonalization, resulting in an increase in our customer experience and thus in the day-to-day use of ecosystem components. The more people connect to the ecosystem, the more applications appear in marketplaces, platforms, application stores, the more services they use from the cloud and the more content, payment card data and passwords are stored there, the harder it will be for users and developers to switch between digital ecosystems Responding to ever-changing customer needs has also posed a significant challenge to the world’s largest multinationals. It has been recognized that digitalisation alone is no longer a sufficient condition to address the challenges. The key to the solution lies in the digital ecosystem model, which has been most successfully developed by BigTech companies at the cost of continuous experimentation, failures and a wealth of experience. BigTech companies have recognized that they may be able to transform industries thanks to the fact that the value chain has become modularly reorganized and the relationships between actors in the value chain have become digital. The smaller the value chain, the more substitutes appeared on the surface. As a consequence of digitization and the emergence of new generation technologies, the former monolithic, so-called on-premise IT systems will be replaced by a microservice architecture and a cloud-based approach. Add to this the opportunities offered by 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning, an increasingly complex digital world (metaverse) unfolds before us, in which existence requires a new business approach, strategy and implementation. The paradigm shift can be seen not only in IT but also in the business approach. Instead of or in addition to cost rationalization, maximizing the digital customer experience is now a priority. The way to do this is through the creation of real-time operations, which also results in a redesign of the entire value chain. Companies that don’t join any digital ecosystem and / or build their own are expected to face the “innovator dilemma” like Kodak, Nokia and many more companies that didn’t recognize in time what response they needed to make. challenges of digital transformation. What could be these answers? How do banks build digital ecosystems on the model of BigTech? What will be the new directions of digital transformation? We are looking for answers to these questions at this year’s FinTechShow. Hardware, software, tests, curiosities and colorful news from the IT world by clicking here