---
layout: post
title: APIs Can Open Up Your Company To Outside Ideas
image: >-
  https://s3.amazonaws.com/kinlane-productions2/api-evangelist/absolut/absolut-vodka-logo.png
author:
  name: kinlane
tags:
  - APIs
  - Open
---
I talk about this concept often, but couldn't find any definitive post on APIs opening up a company, organization, or agency to outside ideas. This is something I hear from startups, up to federal government agencies, and from well known business brands, such as Absolut Vodka.

Absolut was one of the [keynotes at API Strategy & Practice in Amsterdam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXk1dvLKl-U), this last march. Eva Sjokvist, from Absolut, walked us through the development of their [Absolut Drinks Database API](https://addb.absolutdrinks.com/docs/). An amazing story by itself, but one thing she said that stood out to me, which is an interestingly common by-product of the API lifecycle, was the process itself opened up the company, making it more receptive to outside ideas, and collaboration.

I hear this sentiment often from groups who are developing API programs at their companies, and you see shining examples, like [from Edmunds.com](http://developer.edmunds.com/) with their [internal API Summit](http://apievangelist.com/2014/06/27/internal-api-summit-within-every-company/), but rarely do I see a metric to measure API driven, cultural change. APIs don't just open up your company’s assets and resources for access by trusted partners, or potentially the public, establishing a sort of external R&D lab, it has the potential to open up a valuable feedback loop as well, bringing in new ideas that have the potential to change how a group sees the world--evolving internal culture.

The potential for opening up a company, bringing them closer to their partners and customers, or a government agency, opening up healthier dialogue with constituents, is the most important results of an API program—greater than any single application that will get built on an API.