Big Time Innovation…Small

I’m always commenting that large software companies have a harder time innovating than smaller companies. Here’s a good strategy to avoid that problem in a the notes from the MonetizationBizModels session at MashUp camp along those lines:

EBay, no need to charge for APIs because we make money in other ways when other people use them. We’re not as nimble as we were before, no big company is – so its important that we allow others to use our APIs to make money and build the business in the direction they want it go. Anyone with an API into a shopping mechanism has an easy way.

Once you open up your APIs, of course, you encounter another problem: how to get developers to start using them.