Building The Digital Enterprise A Guide To Constructing Monetization Models Using Digital Technologies Business in The Digital Economy Skilton Mark

Building the Digital Enterprise A Guide
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Using Digital Technologies Business in
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Praise for Building the Digital Enterprise
“The impact of digital technology on the ways technology, the
enterprise, and people interact with the wider ecosystem of the
economy is unprecedented.
Understanding digital technology is critical to scale new outcomes

and values.
Mark Skilton provides excellent new mechanisms for practitioners to

think digitally in order to drive new monetization in their enterprise.”
— Professor Dr Ola Henfridsson, Professor of Information Systems &

Management ISM, Warwick Business School WBS, University of
Warwick, UK; Visiting Professor, Swedish Center for Digital
Innovation, University of Gothenburg; Senior Editor of Information
Systems Research and Journal of Information Technology; former
Associate Editor and Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly
“The impact of digitization can be seen across all sectors: enabling

organizations to deliver a superior customer experience through
multiple channels, creating new products and services using
disruptive technologies, and redefining hitherto successful business
models. This represents a huge opportunity for new value growth,
but also presents significant challenges in privacy, cyber security,
and the need for a shift in leadership style and culture. Mark
Skilton’s book is an important contribution to our understanding of
the evolution of business performance and industrial transformation
in the digital age. The volume highlights how a variety of
practitioners in business and IT are using best practice to innovate
and create successful digital businesses.”
— Anita Chandraker, Digital Lead,
Member of PA’s Management Group, PA Consulting Group
“The world economy is being transformed by digitization and

developing the practice required for new digital businesses is critical
for companies and markets. Mark Skilton shows how companies are
dynamically building new digital solutions and sets up a way to think
digitally in this new world, as well as how to put that mind- set into
practice.”
— Professor Dr Irene Ng, Professor of Marketing and Service

Systems, Warwick Manufacturing Group WMG, University of
Warwick, UK; Director, International Institute of Product and Service
Innovation; ESRC/
Innovate UK Innovation Caucus Thought Leader; author of Value &

Worth: Creating New Markets in the Digital Economy
“The march toward digitalization is forcing organizations today to

seek ways to maximize new technologies at scales never seen
before. In this rapidly changing business climate, Enterprise
Architecture can help transform how businesses maximize their
technology investments to drive higher value for customers,
partners, and stakeholders. In this book, Mark Skilton provides
practice
examples for new digital solutions and illustrates how companies can
enable architectural thinking across the enterprise.”
— Allen Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Open

Group, Global consortium for enabling business objectives through
International IT Standards; President, Association of Enterprise
Architects (AEA)
“The public sector is increasingly engaged in transformational

change, focused on enabling the capabilities of individuals and
communities as global economic, social and political forces shape
society. Technology is increasingly the default means of engagement
and service provision for local and central government as citizens
and services become more ‘connected’. Mark Skilton’s book is an
important contribution which illustrates the central role of digital
access and delivery in contemporary public service.”
— Daniel Goodwin, Advisor;
Consultant; former Local Authority Chief Executive
“The use of technology in healthcare has the potential to transform

lives and outcomes not only for patients and clinicians but also the
way care in the community and the wider society and its population
is practiced. We see rapid advances in the use of medical technology
in many life sciences and healthcare fields where new innovative
ways of treatment to new care models are changing how to think
about the collection, analysis, diagnosis, and treatment.
Mark Skilton has provided an important link with digital technology

and how practitioners need to think in the uses of this technology
across industries and bring this into their own field of best practice.”
— Professor Dr Christopher James, Professor of Biomedical

Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Warwick, UK;
Director, Warwick Engineering in Biomedicine; Editor- in- Chief, IET
Healthcare Technology Letters
“Businesses and the economy are being driven my many forces of

change as society, incomes and new regulations disrupt and change
how money and markets operate. The ‘digital economy’ is
increasingly a central issue in enabling the ‘connected society’ and
driving new business models and practices. Mark Skilton’s book
provides important practitioner guidance on how to think about
digital business and its economic outcomes and implications.”
— Dr Alexander Roy, Economist, Strategy Manager, Manchester

Airports Group (MAG)
Digital technologies are revolutionizing the business world –
challenging existing practices and enabling a new generation of
business models.
Business in the Digital Economy is an accessible new series of books

that tackles the business impacts of technology and the emerging
digital economy. Aimed at non- technical, mid- senior executives and
business managers, this series will help inform choices and guide
decision-making on all major technological trends and their
implications for business.
Series editors: Alan Brown and Mark Thompson
Available titles:
Predictive Analytics, Data Mining and Big Data Steven Finlay
9781137379290
Digitizing Government
Alan Brown, Jerry Fishenden and Mark Thompson
9781137443625
Series ISBN: 9781137395245

onstructing al
oC
A Guide t
Monetization
Models Using Digit
hnologies
Tec
Building the Digital
Enterprise
Mark Skilton
Professor of Practice, Warwick Business School, UK
© Mark Skilton 2015
© Foreword Simon Ricketts 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-

47770-5
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this

publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the
provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under
the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the
Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6– 10 Kirby Street,
London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this

publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for
damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of

this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers

Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above

companies and has companies and representatives throughout the
world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United

States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-55528-4 ISBN 978-1-137-47772-9 (eBook) DOI

10.1057/9781137477729
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from
fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and
manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the
environmental regulations of the country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of

Congress.
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
In memory of my father, who lived through many technological

changes, and my mother, who is a rock of selfless love
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
xiv
Foreword by Simon Ricketts
xviii
Preface
xx
Acknowledgments
xxiii
About the Author
xxvi
Notes on Contributors
xxvii
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
xxxiii
Book Structure
xl
PART I: The Era of Digital Ecosystems
1 Introduction – The Rise of Technological Ecosystems 3
Chapter Introduction 3
The Physical Economy, Digital Economy and
the Digital Ecosystem 5
The Digital Impact on Monetization Strategies 7
Definition of a Digital Ecosystem 8
Definition of Vertical and Horizontal Value Chains 10
Two- sided Platforms (TSPs) and Multi- sided Platforms
(MSPs) 12
Value Network Ecosystems 16
Definition of the Digital Enterprise as a
Monetization
Unit 19
Chapter Summary 21
ix
Contents
2 From Physical Workplaces to Digital Workspaces 22
The Human– Machine Interface
23
The Digital User Experience (UX) and Customer
Experience
(CX) 25
Definition of Digital Workspaces from an
Ecosystem
Perspective 29
Definition of Digital Workspaces from a
Human
Perspective 30
Design of Digital Workspaces 32
Definitions of Digital Workspaces 33
Digital Workspaces as Digital Platforms 35
The Next Technological Era 40

Chapter Summary 41
PART II: Digital Enterprise in the Digital Economy 3 The Business

Impact of Digital Technologies 45
Case Studies of Common Digital Solutions 47
1. Government- funded Innovation – Digital Living Spaces and the

Internet of Things Platform 50
2. Consumer Home Products Industry – Smart Home 50
3. Consumer Energy Industry – Smart Energy 51
4. Metropolitan Industry – Smart City 52
5. Consumer Electronics Industry – Smart Retail 54
6. Global Package Logistics Industry – Supply Chain Logistics

Integration and e-Commerce 55
7. Consumer Goods Industry – Corporate
Social
Responsibility 58
8. Automotive Industry – Multi- channel Marketing 59
9. Fast- moving Consumer Foods Industry – Crowdsourced Marketing

60
10. Software Gaming Industry – Hybrid Cloud 61
11. Hospitality Industry – Mobile Guest Services 63

12. Sportswear Industry – Wearables and Gamification 64
13. Financial Services Consumer Industry – Embedded Digital

Payments 64
Contents
xi
14. Healthcare Industry – Augmented Patient
Sensor
Feedback 66
15. Agriculture Industry – Geospatial Mobile Services – Citizen Safety

66
16. Emergency Assurance Industry – Disaster Recovery 67
17. Open Government – Open Data 68
18. Healthcare Industry – e- Medical Data Access Exchange for

Connected
Care 69
19. Medical Research Industry – Translation Research “Bench and
Bedside” 70
20. Security Services Industry – Social Media Emergency

Management 71
21. Consumer Products – Open Innovation Crowdsourcing 72
22. Automotive Power Industry – Smart Electric Cars 73

23. Aerospace Engineering Industry – Smart Maintenance 74
24. Financial Services Industry – Machine Learning and Data

Analytics 75
25. Security Defense Industry – Cyber Defense 76
Chapter Summary 78
PART III: Digital Techniques and Practices
4 Techniques for Building Effective Digital Business Models 81
Case Studies of Digital Business Models 82
1. Digital Retail Business Model – Enabling Digital Consumer Retail

83
2. Digital Financial Services Business Model – Innovation of Digital

Financial Service 96
3. Digital Advanced Engineering Business Model – Advanced Product
Lifecycle 105
4. Digital Hospitality Business Model – Enhancing Hospitality with
Digital 118
5. Digital Government and Cities – Towards a Digital Society and

Smart Cities 125
6. Digital Logistics Business Model – Smart Logistics 137
7. Digital Health Business Model – e-health

and
m-health 143
xi
Contents
Conclusion 149
Chapter Summary 153
5 How to Build the Right Digital Enterprise for Payoff and

Monetization 155
Capabilities 155
Operating Model Practices 156
Market Unbundling and Rebundling 157
Restructuring Capabilities 158
Unbundling of Markets 161
New Modular- layered Architectures 164
Modularity and Layered Modular Architecture 164
The Rise of Hyperscale Digital Enterprise 166
Mechanisms for Scaling Digital Enterprise Adoption 168
Comparison of Physical Object and Digital Object Characteristics 169

Building Innovation Mechanisms in Digital Enterprise 170
Building Adoption Mechanisms in Digital Enterprise 172
Building Scaling Mechanisms in Digital Enterprise 173
Scaling Mechanisms to Drive Self- Reinforcing Scaling Cycles 175
Mechanisms for Monetizing Digital Enterprise Payback 176
Digital Microeconomics and Digital Macroeconomics Mechanisms 178
Operating Model Monetization Mechanisms to Drive Self-Reinforcing
Monetization 179
Growth Monetization Mechanisms to Drive Self- Reinforcing

Monetization 180
Terms and Conditions (Ts & Cs) Monetization Mechanisms to Drive

Self- Reinforcing Monetization 180
Community Monetization Mechanisms to Drive Self- Reinforcing

Monetization 181
Multi-channel Monetization Mechanisms to Drive
Self- Reinforcing Monetization 181
Industrial Standards and Interoperability Monetization Mechanisms

to Drive Self- Reinforcing Monetization 182
Specific Examples of Monetization Strategies 182
Chapter Summary 184
Contents
xiii
6 Reflections on the Impact of Digital Practice 185
A Quantified Life 185
The Meaning of Good Data and Big Data 190
The Digital Supply Chain 194
The Digital Geotourist 197
Digital Art, It’s a Kind of Magic 201
Toward a New Kind of Digital Privacy 206
Chapter Summary 208
Notes and References 210
Index 223
Figures
1. 1 Context of the physical economy, digital economy, digital

ecosystems, and the digital enterprise 5
1. 2 Vertical value chain, horizontal value chain, and value network

ecosystem 17
2. 1 Human– machine boundaries
24
2. 2 Definition of digital workspaces

32
2. 3 Digital workspaces and value networks 36
2. 4 Digital workspaces as platforms
37
3. 1 The digitization of industries
46
3. 2 Digital foundations
49
4. 1 Example digital workspaces notation concept for a digital

enterprise 83
4. 2 The evolving marketplace and supply chain 87
4. 3 Digital marketing capability strategy examples 89
4. 4 Content to purchase (C2P) FMCG example 91
4. 5 Digital supply chain capability strategies 94
xi
xv
4. 6 The emergence of physical to digital payment systems

capabilities 97
4. 7 Evolution of physical and digital financial services capabilities 99

4. 8 The move to integrated context payments 103
4. 9
Digital platform services capabilities examples in financial services

104
4. 10
Vehicle- embedded object-engineering optimization strategies

capabilities 112
4. 11
Enterprise and product lifecycle management
integration strategies capabilities 115
4. 12 Smart hospitality – digital experience strategies capabilities 122
4. 13 Smart hospitality – digital delivery strategies capabilities 123
4. 14 Growing the smart city brand with digital workspaces 136
4. 15 GLAS (global logistics application suite) capabilities 140
4. 16
e-health digital strategies capabilities
145
4. 17 Connected digital enterprise architecture example 150
4. 18
Toward digital ecosystems
151
4. 19 Designing digital workspaces that drive digital value 152
5. 1
Unbundling of markets
162
5. 2 Modularity, unbundling and rebundling 163
5. 3
Modular- layered architecture
165
5. 4
Multi- ecosystem layers
167
5. 5
Self- reinforcing socio- technical mechanism 168
5. 6
Self- reinforcing innovation mechanism
171
xvi
5. 7 Self- reinforcing adoption mechanism
172
5. 8 Self- reinforcing scaling mechanism
174
5. 9 Monetization and scaling
176
Tables
2. 1 Digital knowledge platform examples
38
2. 2 Digital contextual augmentation platform examples 38
2. 3 Digital transit platform examples
38
2. 4 Digital personal/business community platform examples 39
2. 5 Digital room/facility platform examples 39
2. 6 Digital object platform examples
40
3. 1 Foundation digital practices
47
4. 1 Digital business model case studies 82
4. 2 Examples of retail and logistics operational customer and

consumer desires, needs and outcomes 85
4. 3 Machine learning performance and customer outcome examples

109
4. 4 Examples of strategic and analytics benefits of embedded
software and product engineering 118
4. 5 Hospitality operational versus customer outcomes 120
4. 6 Smart government, smart city outcomes examples 128
4. 7 Lean outcomes
138
4. 8 Healthcare enterprise and patient outcomes 143
4. 9 Emerging model of healthcare
147
xvi
5. 1 Unbundling and rebundling by digital – industry example 158
5. 2 Unbundling and rebundling capability examples of industry

markets and enterprise 159
5. 3 Examples of scaling for investment 175
5. 4 Examples of monetization strategies
183
6. 1 Definitions of privacy
207
Foreword
Simon Ricketts, Group Chief Information Officer, Rolls- Royce PLC
We are living in times of unprecedented social and technological

change. The tools that individuals and organizations can now access
provide real opportunities to transform how our society and
commerce operate. Although this is an observation that could have
been made at any time in the past 30 years –
by definition, technology is always about change – what is different

today is the speed of change and the scale of impact. The question
arises, therefore, as to how best to navigate the digital world, sifting
hype from reality whilst ensuring that organizations genuinely
benefit from the opportunities available.
For Boards of Management and business leaders the major challenge

is always to pick the winners and to ensure that the chosen digital
capabilities genuinely transform the organization. Another challenge
is to manage technology from different generations until it becomes
clear how to retire legacy: success depends heavily on ensuring that
the “old” stops and that new processes and tools genuinely become
the operating norm. The task is not helped by the propensity of the
IT and consulting industry to hype bubbles of technology with claims
that are often out of context and not wholly thought through.
Picking the right capabilities and guaranteeing transformation

requires some good habits.
Good starting questions are always, “to what extent does our current
technology enable our plans and strategies?” and “to what extent
are our strategies informed by an appreciation of technology that is
available?” These might also be informed by observations on how
well the customer or employee experience compares with competitor
and peer experience. Ensuring that conclusions are based on
evidence and that valuable dialogue takes place requires a clear
approach to the organization of the technology function, how xviii
Foreword
xix
collaboration with the rest of the business is enabled and the

process steps that ensure this.
Picking a job title for the IT leader so that it reflects current

technology can be helpful but also a huge distraction. The move
from Data Processing Manager to Systems Manager then to
Information Technology Director and Chief Information Officer took
place over some 20 years and reflected accurately the nature of the
task to be managed as technology changed. Recent debates on
whether the leader should be known as the CIO, CTO, or Chief
Digital Officer is less helpful. This is because the choice of title is
primarily about emphasis and in fact all these domains have
relevance. What matters is picking one, sticking with it and, most
importantly, operating a process that guarantees collaboration
between the function and the rest of the business.
The critical issue is to define the portfolio of digital capability that

the organization needs, getting it built and implemented whilst
retiring earlier generations. DDRR is a useful aide- memoire.
Defining the portfolio entails answering those strategic questions
referred to above. Delivering and running the associated digital
capability is very much about understanding the technology available
and ensuring that current trends on cost effectiveness and agility are
exploited. A failure to retire dilutes benefits and increases cost.
These principles remain constant and help navigate new technology.
Whilst the term “digital” in the context of information technology can

be seen as trendy, its prominence in just about everything one reads
in this area is evidence that the subject has moved well beyond the
domain of specialists.
This book is an important contribution in describing how digital

enterprises can work and how the various individual technologies
might define the next phase of social and commercial innovation.
Preface
My father was a technical design draftsman who came from an era

of pencil and paper drawings and slide rules. He had grown up in the
years of World War II as an evacuee and gained an early interest in
aeronautical design and flying. I remember seeing his college
aerospace engineering maths
books on calculus, and subscriptions to Air Pictorial and Air Reserve

Gazette magazines with the many drawings of aircraft specifications
and engineering cross- sections. I recall the first sight of a ramjet
engine design diagram and the moment the “penny dropped” in
realizing how thrust was generated by the expanding airflow heated
through a constricted chamber. It enabled the engine capability by
the sheer shape contours of the engine manifold design, together
with the metallurgical properties in materials to support such high
temperatures. The geometric shape perfectly illustrated the
relationship between form and function that I found to be an
invaluable lesson later in life when designing solutions. Before his
career in technical design, my father had served in the Air Training
Corps as part of National Service, became a trained cartographer,
and was stationed in Cyprus to make maps of the Mediterranean
island strategically located between southern Europe and North
Africa. His early days of volunteer flying in Air Training Corps gliders
had given him exposure to navigation skills that had been a trigger
for his entry into the Royal Air Force where he combined his
planning skills.
Looking back through the past 50 years, these three career roles of
flyer, map maker, and designer have seen profound technological
change. Map making back then involved using aerial photography of
the terrain and scouting to locations with optical telescopes,
compasses, sextants, and geometric quad-rants. The creation of
maps with accurate distances, elevations, and positions could take
several months to transcribe into paper copies. Collected location
information needed to be recorded meticulously by handwritten
notes and by visiting the actual locations in person – there was no
electronic transmission xx
Preface
xxi
of this data, and visits had to be regularly repeated by trained

personnel in order to update changes to the maps. Today, satellites
enable geospatial -
positioning navigation and digital imagery that provide real-time

location
information from any point on the earth. The techniques of digital

image scanning and digitization enable both an object and its
location data to be automated with meter and centimeter precision.
For Google Street ViewTM, for example, people drive around and
collect the same information from the comfort of a car seat. Data is
transmitted to huge cloud database archives for data analytics and is
repurposed in websites and smartphones providing location services
– transport directions that are made available via queries that take a
matter of seconds. This can be done remotely in the palm of your
hand using a smartphone, without having to visit the place.
Technical engineering design was another skill that involved paper

drawing boards and complex human drawing skills to render paper-
based schematic representation notations of orthogonal, oblique,
and isometric projections.
There were equally sophisticated part- numbering systems to

identify the bills of materials supported by complex manual paper
filing systems to coordinate many human designers and
manufacturing staff activities in the design process. Specialist
technical illustrators were used to create artistic interpretations and
images to visualize and document the designs. Today, digital 3D
computer-
aided design (CAD) and simulation create physical objects that can
be rendered and tested virtually, collaborating between designers,
often interacting directly with customers and suppliers working
remotely in different locations. Industrial robotics can enable control
in warehouses and manufacturing, including materials handling with
potentially minimal human contact. Computer- aided manufacturing
(CAM) through to 3D printing techniques today provide the capability
of the computer- aided creation of physical objects that are
completely virtual, from original idea right up until the final product
stage.
In transportation, planning trips abroad before the internet involved

telephone calls, paper boarding tickets, and manual passport checks.
If the trip involved air transport, pilot navigation in aircraft involved
radio navigation using radio frequencies to determine position on
earth together with printed paper maps that required skills in
location coordinate reading and the use of on- board direction
compasses. Today, online booking of travel plans on websites are
routine. Computer software programs of machine- learning
algorithms are used widely in the automation of many aspects of
this, from searching for better online transport fares to on- board
control systems in aircraft flight controls, or automotive vehicles
enabling autopilots and self- parking assistance.
xxi
Preface
These examples show that, through the progress of time, how things
get done has radically changed with the advent of new technologies.
In so doing, human experience has been redesigned and has altered
the potential outcomes and the practices to achieve these
experiences.
This book is intended to provide an understanding of the key design
ideas for architecting technology solutions using digital design
principles. We seek to explore ideas of human perception,
visualization, and sensing of spaces and the economic, social, and
artistic value and worth in those spaces as a way to better
understand how to architect and build workspaces of the future.
We aim to explore these ideas in order to help make sense of the

new design techniques and objectives that digital systems are
introducing. Digitization challenges traditional thinking in
architecture design in how we think about physical and virtual
spaces. Digitization opens up new possibilities for individuals,
enterprises, and the wider business world and society.
Digitization is enveloping and entangling everything – everyday

objects, rooms, buildings, cities, vehicles, and locations. This
phenomenon is creating what I call digital ecosystems of products
and service experiences that are transforming how people,
enterprises, and markets work together and compete in the new
economy , the digital economy .
The digital enterprise is made up of new physical and virtual

workspaces.
In this book we explore real business enterprise case examples from

many industries for lessons learnt in how technology workspaces are
architected; we explore how digitization creates new business
economic and social outcomes via a combination of information
systems, business processes , creativity and innovation, commercial
and financial engineering, and social change.
A central theme of this book is to understand what digitization of our

living and working environment means – how it is changing the way
we will need to think in the future in designing workplaces and the
everyday objects within them.
Mark Skilton
2015
Acknowledgments
The development of this book has involved many hours of research

and interviews with professional practitioners
and academics in the field of
business and information technology. I would like to give recognition

and sincere thanks to the following people who gave their time in
discussions, sharing thoughts and ideas that have helped me to craft
this book. Simon Ricketts, Group CIO
of
Rolls-
Royce; Simon Bedford, Associate Producer
(Digital), Warwick Arts Centre; Geraldine Calpin, Senior Vice

President and Global Head of Digital, Hilton International; Gary Lyon,
Chief Innovation Officer, MasterCard Labs, MasterCard Worldwide;
Matthew Hanmer, Global Product Development, Consumer Products,
MasterCard Worldwide; Sybo Dijkstra, Senior Director, Philips
Research, UK; Peter Latham, VP
Logistics
Coca-
Cola Enterprises; Mark Elkins, Head of Digital Sales and Marketing,

Coca- Cola Enterprises, and Lesley Tout, Supply Chain Systems
Director, Coca- Cola Enterprises; Alan Welby, Executive Director of
Liverpool City Local Enterprise Partnership; Daniel Goodwin,
Executive Director of Finance and Policy at the Local Government
Association, and Chief Executive of St Albans City & District Council;
Dr Alex Roy, Economist, New Economy, Manchester City Council; Ulf
Venne, Senior Manager, Customer Engagement, DHL; Alison Crook,
General Manager of Supply Chain HSS, Unipart Logistics; Professor
Joe Nandhakumar, Information Systems and Management, and
Assistant Dean, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK;
Professor Ola Henfridsson, Information Systems and Management
and Head of ISM faculty, Warwick Business School, University of
Warwick, UK; Vikas Vishnoi, Full- Time MBA, Warwick Business
School, University of Warwick, UK; Professor Irene Ng, Marketing
and Service Systems, and Director of the International Institute for
Product and Service Innovation at WMG, University of Warwick, UK;
Dr Susan Wakenshaw, Research Fellow, WMG; Xia Mao, Senior
Research Fellow, xxiii
Acknowledgments
xxi
WMG; Allen Brown, President and CEO of The Open Group
; Dr Chris
Harding, Director of Interoperability, The Open Group; Jacqui Taylor,

CEO
of FlyingBinary; Shaon Talukder, CEO of GeoTourist; Ben Waller,

Senior Researcher, ICDP; Dr Vinay Vaidya, Chief Technology Officer,
KPIT; Rupert Fallows, Services Business Development, KIPT;
Professor Christopher James, Director, Warwick Engineering in
Biomedicine, School of Engineering, University of Warwick, UK.
Many thanks also to the Palgrave Macmillan series editors; Professor

Alan W.
Brown, Associate Dean, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Surrey
Business School, University of Surrey, UK; and Dr Mark Thompson,
Senior Lecturer Information Systems, Cambridge Judge Business
School, University of Cambridge, UK; and to Palgrave Macmillan for
the opportunity to contribute to this series.
Special thanks to Simon Ricketts for his kind support and foreword;
and to the chapter contributors Professor Irene Ng, Jacqui Taylor,
Shaon Talukder, Simon Bedford, Dr Susan Wakenshaw, Ben Waller,
and to Daniel Goodwin, who was immensely helpful. Also a big thank
you to my script reviewers Dr Chris Harding, Forum Director of
Interoperability at The Open Group ; Philipp Kukai, PhD researcher in
digital strategy at the Information Systems Group at Warwick
Business School, UK, and Vikas Vishnoi, full- time MBA, Warwick
Business School, UK and co- founder of Aevesto Technologies. Also a
personal thanks to Vladimir Banarek for great discussions on the
meaning of ecosystems; and to Penelope Gordon for her invaluable
insights in product strategy monetization and metrics.
I would like to add a personal thanks to Professor Mark Taylor,

Finance and Dean of Warwick Business School; Professor Andrew
Lockett, Strategy & Entrepreneurship and Deputy Dean; Professor
Joe Nandhakumar, Information Systems and Management, and
Assistant Dean, Warwick Business School; and Professor Ola
Henfridsson, Information Systems and Management and Head of
ISM faculty, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK, for
their kind support and my endeavors at Warwick Business School.
Many thanks to all the contributors to the book and to all my

colleagues and friends who have supported me over the years; it
means a great deal to me.
I hope this book provides some recognition for all our efforts – and
to those who seek to make an original thought leadership
contribution and recognize the importance of respect for professional
competency- led practitioners
in this
important and exciting revolutionary time in technology.
Acknowledgments
xxv
Disclaimer
All company names, trade names, trademarks, trade dress

designs/logos, copyright images, and products referenced in this
book are the property of their respective owners. No company
references in this book sponsored this book or the content thereof.
About the Author
Mark Skilton is Professor of Practice in Information Systems and

Management at Warwick Business School. With over 20 years’
experience in information technology in many commercial and public
sector businesses, he specializes in helping companies realize their
business value, covering social media networks, big data, mobility,
machine to machine (M2M), internet of things (IoT), and cloud
computing. He has worked with some of the top global international
companies at board level to realize their vision of digital operating
models across their complete technology landscapes. Mark is now
Digital Leader at PA Consulting and, prior to that, was Global
Director of Strategy at Capgemini. Previously, Mark was European
CTO of services, outsourcing, and strategic technology consulting
solutions at CSC. He has been Head of Digital business analysis at
BSkyB TV and media company; led business re-engineering
engagements at KPMG Consulting, and worked in transforming the
business and IT of companies in over 25 countries worldwide. Since
2010
Mark has held international standards body roles in The Open Group
, where he was co- chair of cloud computing and leading open
platform 3.0 initiatives and standards publications. Mark is active in
the ISO JC38 distributed architecture standards and in the “ Hubs-
of- all- things,” a multidisciplinary project funded by the Research
Council’s UK Digital Economy Programme. Mark is also active in
cyber security forums at Warwick University, Ovum Security
Summits, and INFOSEC. He has spoken at the EU Commission on
Digital Ecosystems Agenda and is an EU competition judge on Smart
Outsourcing Innovation. Mark has an MBA, as well as a post-
graduate qualification in production engineering and design
management from Cambridge University and a degree in applied
engineering science subjects from University of Sheffield.
xxvi
Simon Bedford
Simon Bedford is a freelance digital and theater producer, working

on a range of both digital and theater projects. Most recently he was
Associate Producer (Digital) at Warwick Arts Centre where he
curated and produced a new strand of projects that explored
creative uses of new technology. Simon previously worked at
Hoipolloi theater company for eight years, becoming the company’s
Executive Producer/CEO in 2011. He led the company’s online and
social media explorations, demonstrating how they could diversify
both artistic output and communication with audiences. For
Hoipolloi, Simon produced award- winning theater in the UK, at the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and on international tours across Europe
and to Australia, Canada, Colombia, and the United States. From
2010 to 2013 he was an elected board member of the Independent
Theatre Council.
Geraldine Calpin
Geraldine Calpin is Senior Vice President and Global Head of Digital
at Hilton Worldwide, responsible for setting the strategic direction for
Hilton’s digital guest agenda, and maximizing commercial advantage
from all direct digital channels. She joined Hilton Worldwide in 2002.
During her tenure, she has been responsible for the launch of
Hilton’s pioneering digital checkin with room selection solution at
over 4000 hotels, the introduction of its ecommerce function, and
the development of its unique ecommerce
and demand generation program for hotels globally. Prior to joining

Hilton Worldwide, she held various roles within the travel industry,
including sales, planning, operations, and marketing roles at
Trusthouse Forte and Le Méridien Hotels.
xxvi
ii Notes on Contributors
xxvi
Alison Crook
Alison is General Manager of Supply Chain HSS for key Unipart

Logistics Industrial clients, developing best practice and waste
reduction that impact both the customer experience and cost to
serve. Alison has over 19 years’
experience of managing complex supply chains using the principles

of the Unipart Way to deliver operational excellence. Predominantly
focused within the automotive industry, she has also worked within
both the defense and industrial sectors. Alison joined Unipart
Logistics in 1995 as a business graduate from Cardiff University, UK.
Her core disciplines have been inventory and supplier management
and many roles in global supply chain management.
This experience includes helping to establish a global control center,
and delivering industry- leading performance by combining the
Unipart Way with technology to create fingertip control of a complex
supply chain that allowed significant supply chain costs and service
improvements to be realized.
Sybo Dijkstra
Sybo Dijkstra is Head of Philips Research UK, where programs in oral

healthcare and home healthcare solutions are being conducted. Prior
to joining Philips, he was responsible for managing healthcare
information management research within Philips Research, driving
research and innovation in advanced clinical IT solutions and clinical
decision support for Philips Healthcare business. Previous
responsibilities include the marketing and strategy of the Philips
Healthcare Informatics business worldwide, during which period
Philips made significant steps in becoming a worldwide leader in
radiology and cardiology IT solutions through the introduction of
new innovative products and acquisitions. Sybo has been active in
Philips communications and IT businesses, holding various positions
in marketing, strategy, and innovation, in which he successfully
introduced advanced wireless products as well as the development
and introduction of VoIP and PC- based call- processing solutions.
Daniel Goodwin
Daniel has worked in local government for over 30 years and was
previously Executive Director of Finance and Policy at the Local
Government Association, and Chief Executive of St Albans City &
District Council. He holds a Master’s in Public Administration from
Warwick Business School and contributes widely on public service
policy and strategy. Fostering good community health and capacity,
and learning how to make sustainable long- term improvement
which supports people, are at the heart of Daniel’s approach.
He is particularly interested in the interrelationships across the public
sector
xxix
and beyond, between evidence, policy, practice, and evaluation.

Daniel is Senior Associate Fellow at the University of Birmingham’s
Institute of Local Government, contributing to thinking on local
leadership and services, the wider public sector, and beyond. He is
also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. At present he is working
on a range of consultancy projects covering futures, demand
management, growth, organizational development and strategy, and
operational management in both local government and health.
Christopher James
Professor James is Chair in Biomedical Engineering and is Director of

Warwick Engineering in Biomedicine at the University of Warwick,
UK. He has several distinguished academic and industry posts
including appointed Professor of Healthcare Technology and
founding director of Digital Healthcare at the University of Warwick,
UK. Professor James is a biomedical engineer and his research
activity centers on the development of biomedical signal and
pattern- processing techniques, as well as the use of technological
innovations for use in advancing healthcare and promoting wellbeing
. Neural engineering forms a large part of his work, as to date his
work has concentrated on the development of advanced processing
techniques applied to the analysis of the electromagnetic activity of
the human brain, primarily in brain– computer interfacing. He is a
past chairman of several global institutes including IEEE
and several other international bodies. In 2012 he was awarded the

IET Sir Monty Finniston Award for Achievement for his work in the
biomedical engineering field. Professor James has held editorial
positions for books, journals, and publications covering medical
informatics, biomedical engineering, and neural engineering. He is
founding editor- in- chief of the IET journal Healthcare Technology
Letters.
Irene Ng
Irene Ng is Professor of Marketing and Service Systems and Director

of the International Institute for Product and Service Innovation at
WMG, University of Warwick, UK. She is also an adjunct professor at
the National University of Singapore and College Research Associate
at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK. Irene studied
physics, applied physics, and computer programming as an
undergraduate and became an entrepreneur and practitioner for 16
years before switching to an academic career. During her time in
industry she occupied a number of senior positions, rising to become
CEO of SA Tours and Travel group of companies (Singapore,
Malaysia, China, and the UK) and founded Empress Cruise Lines, a
company with an annual turnover of US$250 million, which she sold
in 1996. A business economist through her
xxx
doctoral training, Irene’s research lies in the trans- disciplinary

understanding of value and new business models. Irene is a
Research Services Fellow at the Advanced Institute of Management
and also the ESRC/NIHR Placement Fellow. Both an entrepreneur
and an academic, Irene is passionate about the link between
practice and research. She is an advisor to start- ups on new pricing
and revenue models in digital businesses.
Alexander Roy
Alexander Roy is Principal Economist at Mott MacDonald, the global

engineering and management consultancy. Prior to that he was
Deputy Director of Research at New Economy, the economic agency
and think tank for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and
its ten partner local authorities.
A professional economist with over 15 years of experience in both

the public and private sectors, Alex’s research has had a particular
focus on technology, including how the public sector can support the
growth of the knowledge economy , and he has been closely
involved in the rollout of digital infrastructure in many parts of the
UK.
Shaon Talukder
Like a lot of UK tech enthusiasts, Shaon was the proud recipient of a

BBC
microcomputer from his parents and learned basic programming at

the age of nine. He says: “One of my most proud achievements was
being able to code with my able assistant (my sister, Moushmy,
nearly four years younger than me) a ‘Space Invader- style’ game
using a swarm of alien letter X’s and defend-ing the earth with my
spaceship letter ‘A’ and unleashing hell by firing lots of exclamation
marks at the enemy. I am not sure my sister was as impressed.”
Shaon was educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and later

studied pharmacy at the London School of Pharmacy, and after a
period of eight years in the profession went into business with his
sister. They started to acquire companies as diverse as high- end
serviced apartments (Ideal Rooms) to tech, including EQ
Transcriptions, which transcribes audio into text for universities,
hospitals, and law firms. Their latest and most exciting venture is the
augmented reality platform, GeoTourist, which transforms digital
space into educational environments, using GPS and audio to
describe the world around you.
Jacqui Taylor
Jacqui is CEO of FlyingBinary, a data analytics and consulting
company. She has 25 years’ experience of deploying technology
change across the world.
After implementing a banking regulatory change program with Web

3.0
xxxi
tools she co- founded FlyingBinary, a web science company which

changes the world with data. An appointment for the third year to
the Open Data User Group as an Open Data domain expert
recognized her as a web scientist of influence in the era of big data
and the internet of things (IoT). An inclusion as a data innovator for
a number of the smart city initiatives signals the next steps for her
company and IoT. Jacqui trains advanced analysts on the science of
data visualization; she is a regular speaker on cloud adoption, big
data, smarter analytics, and profiting from IoT. Jacqui collaborated
with data journalism thought leaders to produce her first book
Mapping the Future, which signals the changes for the industry.
Published in November 2013 by the Digital Enlightenment Forum,
Jacqui has contributed a chapter to the 2014 Yearbook relating to
her vision for the web and the role that open data will play.
Vinay Vaidya
Vaidya heads the Center for Research in Engineering Sciences and

Technology (CREST), Phoenix, Arizona. He is also KPIT’s CTO for IT
engineering services.
He has a PhD in Computer Vision from the University of Washington.

At Boeing, he was the youngest person to receive the highest
technical honor of Senior Principal Scientist, Associate Technical
Fellow. Dr Vaidya serves as the vice chair of IEEE SMC Mumbai. He is
an honorary adjunct in the Computer Studies faculty at the
Symbiosis Institute in Pune, India. He is a member of the Research
Recognition board and a PhD advisor. His outstanding achievements
have earned him a position in the 2008 Marquis Who’s Who in the
World 25th anniversary edition. He has published a chapter in the
Academic Press book titled Machine Vision for Inspection and
Measurement. He has several research papers to his credit and
continues to conduct research in pattern recognition and image
processing, data compression, embedded systems, and security
systems.
Ulf Venne
Ulf Venne is Senior Project Manager for Deutsche Post DHL, based in
Cologne, Germany. Ulf is currently leading the Customer
Engagement team of DHL Resilience360, a logistics risk
management solution for supply chains.
Before joining DHL he worked for Huawei as supply chain operations

lead for Germany. In his studies he was engaged with his own web-
design and IT programming company. Ulf holds a Magister Artium
degree in Sinology (Chinese culture and language) and Economics
from the Friedrich- Alexander- University of Erlangen- Nürnberg.
xxxi
Susan Wakenshaw
Susan Wakenshaw is a research fellow with the Service Systems

group. She is part of Business Innovation Group (Big) at WMG at the
University of Warwick, UK. Susan has engaged in various
cutting-
edge interdisciplinary
research projects through collaboration with academic,

manufacturing, and the defense industries, such as 3D chocolate
printing and new business model; SERTES; KT- Box. Currently she is
working on Euro 1.2 million RCUK-funded projects: HAT and other
projects such as HARRIET and a project on smart cities and smart
citizens. Susan’s expertise is in consumer culture theory, consumer
identity projects, social theories, viable systems, technology
philosophy and privacy . She studied pharmacy, management
science, and marketing, and holds a PhD in marketing from the
University of Lancaster. She has presented and published academic
papers in international journals and conferences (such as Frontiers,
QUIS, SERVSIG) in the domain of marketing and service.
Ben Waller
Ben is a senior researcher at the International Car Distribution

Programme (ICDP), and is based in the UK. ICDP is an international
research- based organization focused on automotive distribution,
including the supply and retailing of new and used vehicles,
aftersales, network structures, and operations.
Through research activities, data services, education, events, and

consulting, ICDP works with vehicle makers, dealers, suppliers, and
related organizations to improve the quality and effectiveness of the
distribution model. Ben has presented to a range of international
audiences, from academic conferences to senior executives;
additionally, he also authors articles for the business press and
delivers executive teaching.
Alan Welby
Alan Welby is Executive Director, Key Growth Sectors, at the

Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), UK.
Representing the interests of over 500 businesses, the LEP develops
and promotes the Liverpool City region. Alan works closely with
major companies, universities, the NHS, science parks, and local and
national government to drive the development of the future
economy of the region. Previously, Alan was Executive Director of
Strategy at One North East, the regional development agency . His
career has included senior positions in industry, higher education,
local government, and the European Commission in Birmingham,
London, Brussels, and Madrid.
List of Abbreviations and
Acronyms
2SMP
Two- sided marketplace
ACID
Atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability
ADAS
Advanced driver assistance
AGI
Association for geographical information
AI Artificial
intelligence
AIT
Automated identification technologies
ALM
Application lifecycle management
API
Application program interface
ARPU
Average revenue per user
ATM
Automatic teller machine
ATTE
Advanced technology transformation engineering
AUM
Assets under management
B2B
Business to business
B2C
Business to consumer
BASE
Basically available, soft state, eventually consistent BC Business
continuity
BEPS
Base erosion and profit shift

BPM
Business process management
BREEAM Building Research Establishment Assessment Methodology ii
xxxi
v List of Abbreviations and Acronyms xxxi
C2B
Consumer to business
C2C
Consumer to consumer
C2P
Content to purchase
CAD
Computer- aided design
CAM
Computer- aided manufacturing
CDO
Chief data officer
CDO
Chief digital officer
CEO
Chief executive officer
CGI
Computer- generated image
Churn
The rate of change of customers arriving and leaving your product or

service
CIO
Chief information officer
CMB
Contact memory button
CMO
Chief marketing officer
CSO
Chief security officer
CRM
Customer relationship management
CSR
Corporate social responsibility
CVaR
Calculated value at risk

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III
From this there follows a fact of decisive importance which has
hitherto been hidden from the mathematicians themselves.
There is not, and cannot be, number as such. There are several
number-worlds as there are several Cultures. We find an Indian, an
Arabian, a Classical, a Western type of mathematical thought and,
corresponding with each, a type of number—each type
fundamentally peculiar and unique, an expression of a specific
world-feeling, a symbol having a specific validity which is even
capable of scientific definition, a principle of ordering the Become
which reflects the central essence of one and only one soul, viz., the
soul of that particular Culture. Consequently, there are more
mathematics than one. For indubitably the inner structure of the
Euclidean geometry is something quite different from that of the
Cartesian, the analysis of Archimedes is something other than the
analysis of Gauss, and not merely in matters of form, intuition and
method but above all in essence, in the intrinsic and obligatory
meaning of number which they respectively develop and set forth.
This number, the horizon within which it has been able to make
phenomena self-explanatory, and therefore the whole of the “nature”
or world-extended that is confined in the given limits and amenable
to its particular sort of mathematic, are not common to all mankind,
but specific in each case to one definite sort of mankind.
The style of any mathematic which comes into being, then,
depends wholly on the Culture in which it is rooted, the sort of
mankind it is that ponders it. The soul can bring its inherent
possibilities to scientific development, can manage them practically,
can attain the highest levels in its treatment of them—but is quite
impotent to alter them. The idea of the Euclidean geometry is
actualized in the earliest forms of Classical ornament, and that of the
Infinitesimal Calculus in the earliest forms of Gothic architecture,
centuries before the first learned mathematicians of the respective
Cultures were born.
A deep inward experience, the genuine awakening of the ego,
which turns the child into the higher man and initiates him into
community of his Culture, marks the beginning of number-sense as it
does that of language-sense. It is only after this that objects come to
exist for the waking consciousness as things limitable and
distinguishable as to number and kind; only after this that properties,
concepts, causal necessity, system in the world-around, a form of
the world, and world laws (for that which is set and settled is ipso
facto bounded, hardened, number-governed) are susceptible of
exact definition. And therewith comes too a sudden, almost
metaphysical, feeling of anxiety and awe regarding the deeper
meaning of measuring and counting, drawing and form.
Now, Kant has classified the sum of human knowledge according
to syntheses a priori (necessary and universally valid) and a
posteriori (experiential and variable from case to case) and in the
former class has included mathematical knowledge. Thereby,
doubtless, he was enabled to reduce a strong inward feeling to
abstract form. But, quite apart from the fact (amply evidenced in
modern mathematics and mechanics) that there is no such sharp
distinction between the two as is originally and unconditionally
implied in the principle, the a priori itself, though certainly one of the
most inspired conceptions of philosophy, is a notion that seems to
involve enormous difficulties. With it Kant postulates—without
attempting to prove what is quite incapable of proof—both
unalterableness of form in all intellectual activity and identity of form
for all men in the same. And, in consequence, a factor of incalculable
importance is—thanks to the intellectual prepossessions of his
period, not to mention his own—simply ignored. This factor is the
varying degree of this alleged “universal validity.” There are
doubtless certain characters of very wide-ranging validity which are
(seemingly at any rate) independent of the Culture and century to
which the cognizing individual may belong, but along with these
there is a quite particular necessity of form which underlies all his
thought as axiomatic and to which he is subject by virtue of
belonging to his own Culture and no other. Here, then, we have two
very different kinds of a priori thought-content, and the definition of a
frontier between them, or even the demonstration that such exists, is
a problem that lies beyond all possibilities of knowing and will never
be solved. So far, no one has dared to assume that the supposed
constant structure of the intellect is an illusion and that the history
spread out before us contains more than one style of knowing. But
we must not forget that unanimity about things that have not yet
become problems may just as well imply universal error as universal
truth. True, there has always been a certain sense of doubt and
obscurity—so much so, that the correct guess might have been
made from that non-agreement of the philosophers which every
glance at the history of philosophy shows us. But that this non-
agreement is not due to imperfections of the human intellect or
present gaps in a perfectible knowledge, in a word, is not due to
defect, but to destiny and historical necessity—this is a discovery.
Conclusions on the deep and final things are to be reached not by
predicating constants but by studying differentiæ and developing the
organic logic of differences. The comparative morphology of
knowledge forms is a domain which Western thought has still to
attack.
IV
If mathematics were a mere science like astronomy or mineralogy,

it would be possible to define their object. This man is not and never
has been able to do. We West-Europeans may put our own scientific
notion of number to perform the same tasks as those with which the
mathematicians of Athens and Baghdad busied themselves, but the
fact remains that the theme, the intention and the methods of the
like-named science in Athens and in Baghdad were quite different
from those of our own. There is no mathematic but only
mathematics. What we call “the history of mathematics”—implying
merely the progressive actualizing of a single invariable ideal—is in
fact, below the deceptive surface of history, a complex of self-
contained and independent developments, an ever-repeated process
of bringing to birth new form-worlds and appropriating, transforming
and sloughing alien form-worlds, a purely organic story of
blossoming, ripening, wilting and dying within the set period. The
student must not let himself be deceived. The mathematic of the
Classical soul sprouted almost out of nothingness, the historically-
constituted Western soul, already possessing the Classical science
(not inwardly, but outwardly as a thing learnt), had to win its own by
apparently altering and perfecting, but in reality destroying the
essentially alien Euclidean system. In the first case, the agent was
Pythagoras, in the second Descartes. In both cases the act is, at
bottom, the same.
The relationship between the form-language of a mathematic and
that of the cognate major arts,[48] is in this way put beyond doubt.
The temperament of the thinker and that of the artist differ widely
indeed, but the expression-methods of the waking consciousness
are inwardly the same for each. The sense of form of the sculptor,
the painter, the composer is essentially mathematical in its nature.
The same inspired ordering of an infinite world which manifested
itself in the geometrical analysis and projective geometry of the 17th
Century, could vivify, energize, and suffuse contemporary music with
the harmony that it developed out of the art of thoroughbass, (which
is the geometry of the sound-world) and contemporary painting with
the principle of perspective (the felt geometry of the space-world that
only the West knows). This inspired ordering is that which Goethe
called “The Idea, of which the form is immediately apprehended in
the domain of intuition, whereas pure science does not apprehend
but observes and dissects.” The Mathematic goes beyond
observation and dissection, and in its highest moments finds the way
by vision, not abstraction. To Goethe again we owe the profound
saying: “the mathematician is only complete in so far as he feels
within himself the beauty of the true.” Here we feel how nearly the
secret of number is related to the secret of artistic creation. And so
the born mathematician takes his place by the side of the great
masters of the fugue, the chisel and the brush; he and they alike
strive, and must strive, to actualize the grand order of all things by
clothing it in symbol and so to communicate it to the plain fellow-man
who hears that order within himself but cannot effectively possess it;
the domain of number, like the domains of tone, line and colour,
becomes an image of the world-form. For this reason the word
“creative” means more in the mathematical sphere than it does in the
pure sciences—Newton, Gauss, and Riemann were artist-natures,
and we know with what suddenness their great conceptions came
upon them.[49] “A mathematician,” said old Weierstrass “who is not at
the same time a bit of a poet will never be a full mathematician.”
The mathematic, then, is an art. As such it has its styles and style-
periods. It is not, as the layman and the philosopher (who is in this
matter a layman too) imagine, substantially unalterable, but subject
like every art to unnoticed changes from epoch to epoch. The
development of the great arts ought never to be treated without an
(assuredly not unprofitable) side-glance at contemporary
mathematics. In the very deep relation between changes of musical
theory and the analysis of the infinite, the details have never yet
been investigated, although æsthetics might have learned a great
deal more from these than from all so-called “psychology.” Still more
revealing would be a history of musical instruments written, not (as it
always is) from the technical standpoint of tone-production, but as a
study of the deep spiritual bases of the tone-colours and tone-effects
aimed at. For it was the wish, intensified to the point of a longing, to
fill a spatial infinity with sound which produced—in contrast to the
Classical lyre and reed (lyra, kithara; aulos, syrinx) and the Arabian
lute—the two great families of keyboard instruments (organ,
pianoforte, etc.) and bow instruments, and that as early as the
Gothic time. The development of both these families belongs
spiritually (and possibly also in point of technical origin) to the Celtic-
Germanic North lying between Ireland, the Weser and the Seine.
The organ and clavichord belong certainly to England, the bow
instruments reached their definite forms in Upper Italy between 1480
and 1530, while it was principally in Germany that the organ was
developed into the space-commanding giant that we know, an
instrument the like of which does not exist in all musical history. The
free organ-playing of Bach and his time was nothing if it was not
analysis—analysis of a strange and vast tone-world. And, similarly, it
is in conformity with the Western number-thinking, and in opposition
to the Classical, that our string and wind instruments have been
developed not singly but in great groups (strings, woodwind, brass),
ordered within themselves according to the compass of the four
human voices; the history of the modern orchestra, with all its
discoveries of new and modification of old instruments, is in reality
the self-contained history of one tone-world—a world, moreover, that
is quite capable of being expressed in the forms of the higher
analysis.
V
When, about 540 B.C., the circle of the Pythagoreans arrived at the
idea that number is the essence of all things, it was not “a step in the
development of mathematics” that was made, but a wholly new
mathematic that was born. Long heralded by metaphysical problem-
posings and artistic form-tendencies, now it came forth from the
depths of the Classical soul as a formulated theory, a mathematic
born in one act at one great historical moment—just as the
mathematic of the Egyptians had been, and the algebra-astronomy
of the Babylonian Culture with its ecliptic co-ordinate system—and
new—for these older mathematics had long been extinguished and
the Egyptian was never written down. Fulfilled by the 2nd century
A.D., the Classical mathematic vanished in its turn (for though it
seemingly exists even to-day, it is only as a convenience of notation
that it does so), and gave place to the Arabian. From what we know
of the Alexandrian mathematic, it is a necessary presumption that
there was a great movement within the Middle East, of which the
centre of gravity must have lain in the Persian-Babylonian schools
(such as Edessa, Gundisapora and Ctesiphon) and of which only
details found their way into the regions of Classical speech. In spite
of their Greek names, the Alexandrian mathematicians—Zenodorus
who dealt with figures of equal perimeter, Serenus who worked on
the properties of a harmonic pencil in space, Hypsicles who
introduced the Chaldean circle-division, Diophantus above all—were
all without doubt Aramæans, and their works only a small part of a
literature which was written principally in Syriac. This mathematic
found its completion in the investigations of the Arabian-Islamic
thinkers, and after these there was again a long interval. And then a
perfectly new mathematic was born, the Western, our own, which in
our infatuation we regard as “Mathematics,” as the culmination and
the implicit purpose of two thousand years’ evolution, though in
reality its centuries are (strictly) numbered and to-day almost spent.
The most valuable thing in the Classical mathematic is its
proposition that number is the essence of all things perceptible to the
senses. Defining number as a measure, it contains the whole world-
feeling of a soul passionately devoted to the “here” and the “now.”
Measurement in this sense means the measurement of something
near and corporeal. Consider the content of the Classical art-work,
say the free-standing statue of a naked man; here every essential
and important element of Being, its whole rhythm, is exhaustively
rendered by surfaces, dimensions and the sensuous relations of the
parts. The Pythagorean notion of the harmony of numbers, although
it was probably deduced from music—a music, be it noted, that knew
not polyphony or harmony, and formed its instruments to render
single plump, almost fleshy, tones—seems to be the very mould for a
sculpture that has this ideal. The worked stone is only a something in
so far as it has considered limits and measured form; what it is is
what it has become under the sculptor’s chisel. Apart from this it is a
chaos, something not yet actualized, in fact for the time being a null.
The same feeling transferred to the grander stage produces, as an
opposite to the state of chaos, that of cosmos, which for the
Classical soul implies a cleared-up situation of the external world, a
harmonic order which includes each separate thing as a well-
defined, comprehensible and present entity. The sum of such things
constitutes neither more nor less than the whole world, and the
interspaces between them, which for us are filled with the impressive
symbol of the Universe of Space, are for them the nonent (τὸ μὴ ὅν).
Extension means, for Classical mankind body, and for us space,
and it is as a function of space that, to us, things “appear.” And,
looking backward from this standpoint, we may perhaps see into the
deepest concept of the Classical metaphysics, Anaximander’s
ἄπειρον—a word that is quite untranslatable into any Western
tongue. It is that which possesses no “number” in the Pythagorean
sense of the word, no measurable dimensions or definable limits,
and therefore no being; the measureless, the negation of form, the
statue not yet carved out of the block; the ἀρχὴ optically boundless
and formless, which only becomes a something (namely, the world)
after being split up by the senses. It is the underlying form a priori of
Classical cognition, bodiliness as such, which is replaced exactly in
the Kantian world-picture by that Space out of which Kant
maintained that all things could be “thought forth.”
We can now understand what it is that divides one mathematic
from another, and in particular the Classical from the Western. The
whole world-feeling of the matured Classical world led it to see
mathematics only as the theory of relations of magnitude, dimension
and form between bodies. When, from out of this feeling, Pythagoras
evolved and expressed the decisive formula, number had come, for
him, to be an optical symbol—not a measure of form generally, an
abstract relation, but a frontier-post of the domain of the Become, or
rather of that part of it which the senses were able to split up and
pass under review. By the whole Classical world without exception
numbers are conceived as units of measure, as magnitude, lengths,
or surfaces, and for it no other sort of extension is imaginable. The
whole Classical mathematic is at bottom Stereometry (solid
geometry). To Euclid, who rounded off its system in the third century,
the triangle is of deep necessity the bounding surface of a body,
never a system of three intersecting straight lines or a group of three
points in three-dimensional space. He defines a line as “length
without breadth” (μῆκος ἀπλατές). In our mouths such a definition
would be pitiful—in the Classical mathematic it was brilliant.
The Western number, too, is not, as Kant and even Helmholtz
thought, something proceeding out of Time as an a priori form of
conception, but is something specifically spatial, in that it is an order
(or ordering) of like units. Actual time (as we shall see more and
more clearly in the sequel) has not the slightest relation with
mathematical things. Numbers belong exclusively to the domain of
extension. But there are precisely as many possibilities—and
therefore necessities—of ordered presentation of the extended as
there are Cultures. Classical number is a thought-process dealing
not with spatial relations but with visibly limitable and tangible units,
and it follows naturally and necessarily that the Classical knows only
the “natural” (positive and whole) numbers, which on the contrary
play in our Western mathematics a quite undistinguished part in the
midst of complex, hypercomplex, non-Archimedean and other
number-systems.
On this account, the idea of irrational numbers—the unending
decimal fractions of our notation—was unrealizable within the Greek
spirit. Euclid says—and he ought to have been better understood—
that incommensurable lines are “not related to one another like
numbers.” In fact, it is the idea of irrational number that, once
achieved, separates the notion of number from that of magnitude, for
the magnitude of such a number (π, for example) can never be
defined or exactly represented by any straight line. Moreover, it
follows from this that in considering the relation, say, between
diagonal and side in a square the Greek would be brought up
suddenly against a quite other sort of number, which was
fundamentally alien to the Classical soul, and was consequently
feared as a secret of its proper existence too dangerous to be
unveiled. There is a singular and significant late-Greek legend,
according to which the man who first published the hidden mystery
of the irrational perished by shipwreck, “for the unspeakable and the
formless must be left hidden for ever.”[50]
The fear that underlies this legend is the selfsame notion that
prevented even the ripest Greeks from extending their tiny city-states
so as to organize the country-side politically, from laying out their
streets to end in prospects and their alleys to give vistas, that made
them recoil time and again from the Babylonian astronomy with its
penetration of endless starry space,[51] and refuse to venture out of
the Mediterranean along sea-paths long before dared by the
Phœnicians and the Egyptians. It is the deep metaphysical fear that
the sense-comprehensible and present in which the Classical
existence had entrenched itself would collapse and precipitate its
cosmos (largely created and sustained by art) into unknown primitive
abysses. And to understand this fear is to understand the final
significance of Classical number—that is, measure in contrast to the
immeasurable—and to grasp the high ethical significance of its
limitation. Goethe too, as a nature-student, felt it—hence his almost
terrified aversion to mathematics, which as we can now see was
really an involuntary reaction against the non-Classical mathematic,
the Infinitesimal Calculus which underlay the natural philosophy of
his time.
Religious feeling in Classical man focused itself ever more and
more intensely upon physically present, localized cults which alone
expressed a college of Euclidean deities. Abstractions, dogmas
floating homeless in the space of thought, were ever alien to it. A cult
of this kind has as much in common with a Roman Catholic dogma
as the statue has with the cathedral organ. There is no doubt that
something of cult was comprised in the Euclidean mathematic—
consider, for instance, the secret doctrines of the Pythagoreans and
the Theorems of regular polyhedrons with their esoteric significance
in the circle of Plato. Just so, there is a deep relation between
Descartes’ analysis of the infinite and contemporary dogmatic
theology as it progressed from the final decisions of the Reformation
and the Counter-Reformation to entirely desensualized deism.
Descartes and Pascal were mathematicians and Jansenists, Leibniz
a mathematician and pietist. Voltaire, Lagrange and D’Alembert were
contemporaries. Now, the Classical soul felt the principle of the
irrational, which overturned the statuesquely-ordered array of whole
numbers and the complete and self-sufficing world-order for which
these stood, as an impiety against the Divine itself. In Plato’s
“Timæus” this feeling is unmistakable. For the transformation of a
series of discrete numbers into a continuum challenged not merely
the Classical notion of number but the Classical world-idea itself, and
so it is understandable that even negative numbers, which to us offer
no conceptual difficulty, were impossible in the Classical mathematic,
let alone zero as a number, that refined creation of a wonderful
abstractive power which, for the Indian soul that conceived it as base
for a positional numeration, was nothing more nor less than the key
to the meaning of existence. Negative magnitudes have no
existence. The expression -2×-3=+6 is neither something
perceivable nor a representation of magnitude. The series of
magnitudes ends with +1, and in graphic representation of negative
numbers
+3+2+10-1-2-3
( —･—･—･･—･—･—･
)
we have suddenly, from zero onwards, positive symbols of
something negative; they mean something, but they no longer are.
But the fulfilment of this act did not lie within the direction of Classical
number-thinking.
Every product of the waking consciousness of the Classical world,
then, is elevated to the rank of actuality by way of sculptural
definition. That which cannot be drawn is not “number.” Archytas and
Eudoxus use the terms surface- and volume-numbers to mean what
we call second and third powers, and it is easy to understand that
the notion of higher integral powers did not exist for them, for a
fourth power would predicate at once, for the mind based on the
plastic feeling, an extension in four dimensions, and four material
dimensions into the bargain, “which is absurd.” Expressions like εix
which we constantly use, or even the fractional index (e.g., 5½) which
is employed in the Western mathematics as early as Oresme (14th
Century), would have been to them utter nonsense. Euclid calls the
factors of a product its sides πλευραί and fractions (finite of course)
were treated as whole-number relationships between two lines.
Clearly, out of this no conception of zero as a number could possibly
come, for from the point of view of a draughtsman it is meaningless.
We, having minds differently constituted, must not argue from our
habits to theirs and treat their mathematic as a “first stage” in the
development of “Mathematics.” Within and for the purposes of the
world that Classical man evolved for himself, the Classical
mathematic was a complete thing—it is merely not so for us.
Babylonian and Indian mathematics had long contained, as essential
elements of their number-worlds, things which the Classical number-
feeling regarded as nonsense—and not from ignorance either, since
many a Greek thinker was acquainted with them. It must be
repeated, “Mathematics” is an illusion. A mathematical, and,
generally, a scientific way of thinking is right, convincing, a “necessity
of thought,” when it completely expresses the life-feeling proper to it.
Otherwise it is either impossible, futile and senseless, or else, as we
in the arrogance of our historical soul like to say, “primitive.” The
modern mathematic, though “true” only for the Western spirit, is
undeniably a master-work of that spirit; and yet to Plato it would have
seemed a ridiculous and painful aberration from the path leading to
the “true”—to wit, the Classical—mathematic. And so with ourselves.
Plainly, we have almost no notion of the multitude of great ideas
belonging to other Cultures that we have suffered to lapse because
our thought with its limitations has not permitted us to assimilate
them, or (which comes to the same thing) has led us to reject them
as false, superfluous, and nonsensical.
VI
The Greek mathematic, as a science of perceivable magnitudes,
deliberately confines itself to facts of the comprehensibly present,
and limits its researches and their validity to the near and the small.
As compared with this impeccable consistency, the position of the
Western mathematic is seen to be, practically, somewhat illogical,
though it is only since the discovery of Non-Euclidean Geometry that
the fact has been really recognized. Numbers are images of the
perfectly desensualized understanding, of pure thought, and contain
their abstract validity within themselves.[52] Their exact application to
the actuality of conscious experience is therefore a problem in itself
—a problem which is always being posed anew and never solved—
and the congruence of mathematical system with empirical
observation is at present anything but self-evident. Although the lay
idea—as found in Schopenhauer—is that mathematics rest upon the
direct evidences of the senses, Euclidean geometry, superficially
identical though it is with the popular geometry of all ages, is only in
agreement with the phenomenal world approximately and within very
narrow limits—in fact, the limits of a drawing-board. Extend these
limits, and what becomes, for instance, of Euclidean parallels? They
meet at the line of the horizon—a simple fact upon which all our art-
perspective is grounded.
Now, it is unpardonable that Kant, a Western thinker, should have
evaded the mathematic of distance, and appealed to a set of figure-
examples that their mere pettiness excludes from treatment by the
specifically Western infinitesimal methods. But Euclid, as a thinker of
the Classical age, was entirely consistent with its spirit when he
refrained from proving the phenomenal truth of his axioms by
referring to, say, the triangle formed by an observer and two infinitely
distant fixed stars. For these can neither be drawn nor “intuitively
apprehended” and his feeling was precisely the feeling which shrank
from the irrationals, which did not dare to give nothingness a value
as zero (i.e., a number) and even in the contemplation of cosmic
relations shut its eyes to the Infinite and held to its symbol of
Proportion.
Aristarchus of Samos, who in 288-277 belonged to a circle of
astronomers at Alexandria that doubtless had relations with
Chaldaeo-Persian schools, projected the elements of a heliocentric
world-system.[53] Rediscovered by Copernicus, it was to shake the
metaphysical passions of the West to their foundations—witness
Giordano Bruno[54]—to become the fulfilment of mighty premonitions,
and to justify that Faustian, Gothic world-feeling which had already
professed its faith in infinity through the forms of its cathedrals. But
the world of Aristarchus received his work with entire indifference
and in a brief space of time it was forgotten—designedly, we may
surmise. His few followers were nearly all natives of Asia Minor, his
most prominent supporter Seleucus (about 150) being from the
Persian Seleucia on Tigris. In fact, the Aristarchian system had no
spiritual appeal to the Classical Culture and might indeed have
become dangerous to it. And yet it was differentiated from the
Copernican (a point always missed) by something which made it
perfectly conformable to the Classical world-feeling, viz., the
assumption that the cosmos is contained in a materially finite and
optically appreciable hollow sphere, in the middle of which the
planetary system, arranged as such on Copernican lines, moved. In
the Classical astronomy, the earth and the heavenly bodies are
consistently regarded as entities of two different kinds, however
variously their movements in detail might be interpreted. Equally, the
opposite idea that the earth is only a star among stars[55] is not
inconsistent in itself with either the Ptolemaic or the Copernican
systems and in fact was pioneered by Nicolaus Cusanus and
Leonardo da Vinci. But by this device of a celestial sphere the
principle of infinity which would have endangered the sensuous-
Classical notion of bounds was smothered. One would have
supposed that the infinity-conception was inevitably implied by the
system of Aristarchus—long before his time, the Babylonian thinkers
had reached it. But no such thought emerges. On the contrary, in the
famous treatise on the grains of sand[56] Archimedes proves that the
filling of this stereometric body (for that is what Aristarchus’s Cosmos
is, after all) with atoms of sand leads to very high, but not to infinite,
figure-results. This proposition, quoted though it may be, time and
again, as being a first step towards the Integral Calculus, amounts to
a denial (implicit indeed in the very title) of everything that we mean
by the word analysis. Whereas in our physics, the constantly-surging
hypotheses of a material (i.e., directly cognizable) æther, break
themselves one after the other against our refusal to acknowledge
material limitations of any kind, Eudoxus, Apollonius and
Archimedes, certainly the keenest and boldest of the Classical
mathematicians, completely worked out, in the main with rule and
compass, a purely optical analysis of things-become on the basis of
sculptural-Classical bounds. They used deeply-thought-out (and for
us hardly understandable) methods of integration, but these possess
only a superficial resemblance even to Leibniz’s definite-integral
method. They employed geometrical loci and co-ordinates, but these
are always specified lengths and units of measurement and never,
as in Fermat and above all in Descartes, unspecified spatial
relations, values of points in terms of their positions in space. With
these methods also should be classed the exhaustion-method of
Archimedes,[57] given by him in his recently discovered letter to
Eratosthenes on such subjects as the quadrature of the parabola
section by means of inscribed rectangles (instead of through similar
polygons). But the very subtlety and extreme complication of his
methods, which are grounded in certain of Plato’s geometrical ideas,
make us realize, in spite of superficial analogies, what an enormous
difference separates him from Pascal. Apart altogether from the idea
of Riemann’s integral, what sharper contrast could there be to these
ideas than the so-called quadratures of to-day? The name itself is
now no more than an unfortunate survival, the “surface” is indicated
by a bounding function, and the drawing as such, has vanished.
Nowhere else did the two mathematical minds approach each other
more closely than in this instance, and nowhere is it more evident
that the gulf between the two souls thus expressing themselves is
impassable.
In the cubic style of their early architecture the Egyptians, so to
say, concealed pure numbers, fearful of stumbling upon their secret,
and for the Hellenes too they were the key to the meaning of the
become, the stiffened, the mortal. The stone statue and the scientific
system deny life. Mathematical number, the formal principle of an
extension-world of which the phenomenal existence is only the
derivative and servant of waking human consciousness, bears the
hall-mark of causal necessity and so is linked with death as
chronological number is with becoming, with life, with the necessity
of destiny. This connexion of strict mathematical form with the end of
organic being, with the phenomenon of its organic remainder the
corpse, we shall see more and more clearly to be the origin of all
great art. We have already noticed the development of early
ornament on funerary equipments and receptacles. Numbers are
symbols of the mortal. Stiff forms are the negation of life, formulas
and laws spread rigidity over the face of nature, numbers make dead
—and the “Mothers” of Faust II sit enthroned, majestic and
withdrawn, in
“The realms of Image unconfined.

... Formation, transformation,
Eternal play of the eternal mind
With semblances of all things in creation
For ever and for ever sweeping round.”[58]
Goethe draws very near to Plato in this divination of one of the

final secrets. For his unapproachable Mothers are Plato’s Ideas—the
possibilities of a spirituality, the unborn forms to be realized as active
and purposed Culture, as art, thought, polity and religion, in a world
ordered and determined by that spirituality. And so the number-
thought and the world-idea of a Culture are related, and by this
relation, the former is elevated above mere knowledge and
experience and becomes a view of the universe, there being
consequently as many mathematics—as many number-worlds—as
there are higher Cultures. Only so can we understand, as something
necessary, the fact that the greatest mathematical thinkers, the
creative artists of the realm of numbers, have been brought to the
decisive mathematical discoveries of their several Cultures by a
deep religious intuition.
Classical, Apollinian number we must regard as the creation of
Pythagoras—who founded a religion. It was an instinct that guided
Nicolaus Cusanus, the great Bishop of Brixen (about 1450), from the
idea of the unendingness of God in nature to the elements of the
Infinitesimal Calculus. Leibniz himself, who two centuries later
definitely settled the methods and notation of the Calculus, was led
by purely metaphysical speculations about the divine principle and
its relation to infinite extent to conceive and develop the notion of an
analysis situs—probably the most inspired of all interpretations of
pure and emancipated space—the possibilities of which were to be
developed later by Grassmann in his Ausdehnungslehre and above
all by Riemann, their real creator, in his symbolism of two-sided
planes representative of the nature of equations. And Kepler and
Newton, strictly religious natures both, were and remained
convinced, like Plato, that it was precisely through the medium of
number that they had been able to apprehend intuitively the essence
of the divine world-order.
VII
The Classical arithmetic, we are always told, was first liberated

from its sense-bondage, widened and extended by Diophantus, who
did not indeed create algebra (the science of undefined magnitudes)
but brought it to expression within the framework of the Classical
mathematic that we know—and so suddenly that we have to assume
that there was a pre-existent stock of ideas which he worked out. But
this amounts, not to an enrichment of, but a complete victory over,
the Classical world-feeling, and the mere fact should have sufficed in
itself to show that, inwardly, Diophantus does not belong to the
Classical Culture at all. What is active in him is a new number-
feeling, or let us say a new limit-feeling with respect to the actual and
become, and no longer that Hellenic feeling of sensuously-present
limits which had produced the Euclidean geometry, the nude statue
and the coin. Details of the formation of this new mathematic we do
not know—Diophantus stands so completely by himself in the history
of so-called late-Classical mathematics that an Indian influence has
been presumed. But here also the influence it must really have been
that of those early-Arabian schools whose studies (apart from the
dogmatic) have hitherto been so imperfectly investigated. In
Diophantus, unconscious though he may be of his own essential
antagonism to the Classical foundations on which he attempted to
build, there emerges from under the surface of Euclidean intention
the new limit-feeling which I designate the “Magian.” He did not
widen the idea of number as magnitude, but (unwittingly) eliminated
it. No Greek could have stated anything about an undefined number
a or an undenominated number 3—which are neither magnitudes
nor lines—whereas the new limit-feeling sensibly expressed by
numbers of this sort at least underlay, if it did not constitute,
Diophantine treatment; and the letter-notation which we employ to
clothe our own (again transvalued) algebra was first introduced by
Vieta in 1591, an unmistakable, if unintended, protest against the
classicizing tendency of Renaissance mathematics.
Diophantus lived about 250 A.D., that is, in the third century of that
Arabian Culture whose organic history, till now smothered under the
surface-forms of the Roman Empire and the “Middle Ages,”[59]
comprises everything that happened after the beginning of our era in
the region that was later to be Islam’s. It was precisely in the time of
Diophantus that the last shadow of the Attic statuary art paled before
the new space-sense of cupola, mosaic and sarcophagus-relief that
we have in the Early-Christian-Syrian style. In that time there was
once more archaic art and strictly geometrical ornament; and at that
time too Diocletian completed the transformation of the now merely
sham Empire into a Caliphate. The four centuries that separate
Euclid and Diophantus, separate also Plato and Plotinus—the last
and conclusive thinker, the Kant, of a fulfilled Culture and the first
schoolman, the Duns Scotus, of a Culture just awakened.
It is here that we are made aware for the first time of the existence
of those higher individualities whose coming, growth and decay
constitute the real substance of history underlying the myriad colours
and changes of the surface. The Classical spirituality, which reached
its final phase in the cold intelligence of the Romans and of which
the whole Classical Culture with all its works, thoughts, deeds and
ruins forms the “body,” had been born about 1100 B.C. in the country
about the Ægean Sea. The Arabian Culture, which, under cover of
the Classical Civilization, had been germinating in the East since
Augustus, came wholly out of the region between Armenia and
Southern Arabia, Alexandria and Ctesiphon, and we have to
consider as expressions of this new soul almost the whole “late-
Classical” art of the Empire, all the young ardent religions of the East
—Mandæanism, Manichæism, Christianity, Neo-Platonism, and in
Rome itself, as well as the Imperial Fora, that Pantheon which is the
first of all mosques.
That Alexandria and Antioch still wrote in Greek and imagined that
they were thinking in Greek is a fact of no more importance than the
facts that Latin was the scientific language of the West right up to the
time of Kant and that Charlemagne “renewed” the Roman Empire.
In Diophantus, number has ceased to be the measure and
essence of plastic things. In the Ravennate mosaics man has
ceased to be a body. Unnoticed, Greek designations have lost their
original connotations. We have left the realm of Attic καλοκάγαθία
the Stoic ἀταραξία and γαλήνη. Diophantus does not yet know zero
and negative numbers, it is true, but he has ceased to know
Pythagorean numbers. And this Arabian indeterminateness of
number is, in its turn, something quite different from the controlled
variability of the later Western mathematics, the variability of the
function.
The Magian mathematic—we can see the outline, though we are
ignorant of the details—advanced through Diophantus (who is
obviously not a starting-point) boldly and logically to a culmination in
the Abbassid period (9th century) that we can appreciate in Al-
Khwarizmi and Alsidzshi. And as Euclidean geometry is to Attic
statuary (the same expression-form in a different medium) and the
analysis of space to polyphonic music, so this algebra is to the
Magian art with its mosaic, its arabesque (which the Sassanid
Empire and later Byzantium produced with an ever-increasing
profusion and luxury of tangible-intangible organic motives) and its
Constantinian high-relief in which uncertain deep-darks divide the
freely-handled figures of the foreground. As algebra is to Classical
arithmetic and Western analysis, so is the cupola-church to the Doric
temple and the Gothic cathedral. It is not as though Diophantus were
one of the great mathematicians. On the contrary, much of what we
have been accustomed to associate with his name is not his work
alone. His accidental importance lies in the fact that, so far as our
knowledge goes, he was the first mathematician in whom the new
number-feeling is unmistakably present. In comparison with the
masters who conclude the development of a mathematic—with
Apollonius and Archimedes, with Gauss, Cauchy, Riemann—
Diophantus has, in his form-language especially, something
primitive. This something, which till now we have been pleased to
refer to “late-Classical” decadence, we shall presently learn to
understand and value, just as we are revising our ideas as to the
despised “late-Classical” art and beginning to see in it the tentative
expression of the nascent Early Arabian Culture. Similarly archaic,
primitive, and groping was the mathematic of Nicolas Oresme,
Bishop of Lisieux (1323-1382),[60] who was the first Western who
used co-ordinates so to say elastically[61] and, more important still, to
employ fractional powers—both of which presuppose a number-
feeling, obscure it may be but quite unmistakable, which is
completely non-Classical and also non-Arabic. But if, further, we
think of Diophantus together with the early-Christian sarcophagi of
the Roman collections, and of Oresme together with the Gothic wall-
statuary of the German cathedrals, we see that the mathematicians
as well as the artists have something in common, which is, that they
stand in their respective Cultures at the same (viz., the primitive)
level of abstract understanding. In the world and age of Diophantus
the stereometric sense of bounds, which had long ago reached in
Archimedes the last stages of refinement and elegance proper to the
megalopolitan intelligence, had passed away. Throughout that world
men were unclear, longing, mystic, and no longer bright and free in
the Attic way; they were men rooted in the earth of a young country-
side, not megalopolitans like Euclid and D’Alembert.[62] They no
longer understood the deep and complicated forms of the Classical
thought, and their own were confused and new, far as yet from urban
clarity and tidiness. Their Culture was in the Gothic condition, as all
Cultures have been in their youth—as even the Classical was in the
early Doric period which is known to us now only by its Dipylon
pottery. Only in Baghdad and in the 9th and 10th Centuries were the
young ideas of the age of Diophantus carried through to completion
by ripe masters of the calibre of Plato and Gauss.
VIII
The decisive act of Descartes, whose geometry appeared in 1637,
consisted not in the introduction of a new method or idea in the
domain of traditional geometry (as we are so frequently told), but in
the definitive conception of a new number-idea, which conception
was expressed in the emancipation of geometry from servitude to
optically-realizable constructions and to measured and measurable
lines generally. With that, the analysis of the infinite became a fact.
The rigid, so-called Cartesian, system of co-ordinates—a semi-
Euclidean method of ideally representing measurable magnitudes—
had long been known (witness Oresme) and regarded as of high
importance, and when we get to the bottom of Descartes’ thought we
find that what he did was not to round off the system but to
overcome it. Its last historic representative was Descartes’
contemporary Fermat.[63]
In place of the sensuous element of concrete lines and planes—
the specific character of the Classical feeling of bounds—there
emerged the abstract, spatial, un-Classical element of the point
which from then on was regarded as a group of co-ordered pure
numbers. The idea of magnitude and of perceivable dimension
derived from Classical texts and Arabian traditions was destroyed
and replaced by that of variable relation-values between positions in
space. It is not in general realized that this amounted to the
supersession of geometry, which thenceforward enjoyed only a
fictitious existence behind a façade of Classical tradition. The word
“geometry” has an inextensible Apollinian meaning, and from the
time of Descartes what is called the “new geometry” is made up in
part of synthetic work upon the position of points in a space which is
no longer necessarily three-dimensional (a “manifold of points”), and
in part of analysis, in which numbers are defined through point-
positions in space. And this replacement of lengths by positions
carries with it a purely spatial, and no longer a material, conception
of extension.
The clearest example of this destruction of the inherited optical-
finite geometry seems to me to be the conversion of angular
functions—which in the Indian mathematic had been numbers (in a

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The Business of Digital Publishing An Introduction to

Strategic and Innovative Pricing Price Models for a

Digital Technologies and the Evolving African Newsroom

Understanding digital technology is critical to scale new outcomes

Mark Skilton provides excellent new mechanisms for practitioners to

— Professor Dr Ola Henfridsson, Professor of Information Systems &

“The impact of digitization can be seen across all sectors: enabling

— Anita Chandraker, Digital Lead,

Member of PA’s Management Group, PA Consulting Group

“The world economy is being transformed by digitization and

— Professor Dr Irene Ng, Professor of Marketing and Service

Innovate UK Innovation Caucus Thought Leader; author of Value &

“The march toward digitalization is forcing organizations today to

— Allen Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Open

“The public sector is increasingly engaged in transformational

Consultant; former Local Authority Chief Executive

“The use of technology in healthcare has the potential to transform

Mark Skilton has provided an important link with digital technology

— Professor Dr Christopher James, Professor of Biomedical

“Businesses and the economy are being driven my many forces of

— Dr Alexander Roy, Economist, Strategy Manager, Manchester

Business in the Digital Economy is an accessible new series of books

Series editors: Alan Brown and Mark Thompson

Predictive Analytics, Data Mining and Big Data Steven Finlay

Alan Brown, Jerry Fishenden and Mark Thompson

Series ISBN: 9781137395245

Models Using Digit

Building the Digital

Professor of Practice, Warwick Business School, UK

© Mark Skilton 2015

© Foreword Simon Ricketts 2015

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this

The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of

First published 2015 by

Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers

Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United

ISBN 978-1-349-55528-4 ISBN 978-1-137-47772-9 (eBook) DOI

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of

Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

In memory of my father, who lived through many technological

List of Figures and Tables

Foreword by Simon Ricketts

About the Author

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

PART I: The Era of Digital Ecosystems

1 Introduction – The Rise of Technological Ecosystems 3

The Physical Economy, Digital Economy and