The universe after the Big Bang
evolved and is still evolving continuously. Not as a centrally controlled and
managed process. But, as an ecosystem with each component in its trajectory,
impacted by, and impacting, the other ecosystem building blocks. Zooming in
further, the lifeforms also evolved from the single-cell wonders in the
primordial soup to the atomic-age man through continuous innovation by nature
what we know as mutation across the ecosystem. Every new innovation adds or
subtracts functionalities and capabilities, with some succeeding to sustain and
some failing and perishing. The technological progress we made as a human race
from wheel to spacecraft also followed this incremental innovation across the
ecosystem. That is the “Order of Nature”.
Very often, success in the natural order
arises in a simple yet fundamental paradigm shift, and successful players are
those who quickly adapt to the evolving paradigms, cooperating and
collaborating with the ecosystem. Thought leaders from Darwin to Schumpeter to
Niall Fergusson in the modern era, have argued that, “This is the age of
digital Darwinism, in which it is not the strongest or most intelligent that
survives, but the one that most successfully uses technology to adapt to
change.”
When it comes to eCommerce w can see that it has evolved out
of line with this natural order of the nature. Two or three giants with deep
pockets building up stranglehold in each domain tuned to maximise their shareholders’
interest.
There is extensive innovation in this model. But limited to innovation
to maximise their self-interest through a centrally managed process, to meet
the requirements of their typical user group and/ or enhancing their user group
through a cookie-cutter approach. Any
outside innovation has no chance to survive unless it is subservient to or sold
out to the biggies. [1] It
is an uncontrolled that is engulfing commerce, eventually taking control of it
all and leading to stifling diversity. Much like the magma chamber of a dormant
volcano, this keeps the lid on growth and evolution. This has already set alarm
bells ringing across the world, with many developed countries trying to mitigate
through regulation, be it the America Innovation and Choice Online Act in the US,
the Digital Markets Act in the EU or UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and
Consumers Bill,
It is here that the idea of ONDC has come in with a big
bang. Encouraging innovation and specialisation across the ecosystem with all
of these building blocks communicating among them and interoperable through an
open-source protocol. This allows and encourages lots of people to work on
different building blocks and come out with a plethora of solutions for diverse
user groups and not to straight jacket users or shape the users into a straight-jacket.
As Howard Moskowitz observed in his research paper; there is no single optimum,
but there are multiple optima for every use case. Some will fail and some will
succeed and the winner is society, as a whole and not shareholders of a few
enterprises.
This will address the challenge of market concentration and
associated practices that are a challenge in the platform-centric world
today. This will encourage a natural
order of continuous innovation with some succeeding and some failing with the
overall ecosystem marching forward.
The Build for Bharat Hackathon organised by ONDC recently in
collaboration with Industry demonstrates this. 100,000+ participants in 2,100+
teams from across the country coming together with outstanding solutions with
most of them having a working model and monetization plan shows. This shows how
Open Model will unleash creativity across a wider cross-section of big and
small enterprises and individuals. This is what excited representatives from 20
VCs who attended the hackathon final.
Now it is clear why I have the audacity to term ONDC as the
Big Bang Moment of eCommerce that can totally transform the world of commerce
in the near future.
“When money, rather than innovation or value, is your competitive advantage, that’s when things get boring and stagnant, and monopolies take root.” —Hank Green
