Can you hear "it"? "It"'s a beautiful thing.

What's "it" you're wondering?

Why, it is innovation.

I ran across a social experiment this week. In it, Jonathan has shared his Starbucks card. No kidding. You can download a picture of it, and buy yourself a coffee if there's money on it. If you're feeling generous, you can put money on it. He shares instructions on how to do both.

The interesting part… he's created an API for this experiment.

I can't help but wonder if the API will help him understand the parameters of his experiment. With the API others can innovate on his idea, perhaps spark something that he didn't think of. These sparks might help him fine-tune his project to make it even more useful. They might even spark a whole community of activity around his concept.

Can you do this in your enterprise? Can you release a set of services, whoops - there I went and confused API with services again. Silly me. Can you release an API that let's your community extend your idea as a way of listening to what the community wants?