Yesterday I received the best compliment in a while. I helped a company focus.

Recently I was asking for an XML API, preferably something simple like REST. This company is the electronic equivalent of a printing house and they have the contract for some of the best reference content available.

But the services delivered HTML. It was easily digested as whole content of course, everyone and -thing can do HTML rendering. But it was hard to process. HTML mixes presentation and data, as they say. That complicates processes which are interested in the data only.

So I asked for a REST API. I pointed out that I love their work-- their services are efficient! But I had non-HTML needs and a UI design problem in a non-browser application because of the HTML. See, we could provide HTML rendering in the consuming application by launching the system browser, but that proliferates windows in the user experience. We chose that, because the opposite option was recreating a browser inside the app, which reduced us to web kit and various violations of the product's design gestalt. I didn't want HTML, I wanted a native app. And the third option wasn't really an option-- parsing the HTML to grab data and then piping that to the local UI kit.

What I had access to was a user interface firm that was great and a content services firm that was great, and I needed to mash their work. Each offered to try and provide everything. I tried to politely ask that each focus on their primary skill-- UX design and SGML provision.

That was November. Yesterday I was told my ears should have burned, in a good way. The content services firm is pitching in a new style and is invigorated with a clarity of focus. A lot went into their new campaign, but I hear they specifically credited me with providing a catalyst for adopting a narrower focus. They now focus on content, they provide XML effectively, rendered from your data sources. They still have the HTML library, but that's not their main game anymore. I'm told that this is working very well for them.

I'm tickled. There's a practical benefit of course, that REST API is coming sooner than expected.

However, it also demonstrates the value of focus in the services oriented economy that digital technology has supported. Often "service sector" is assumed to mean college dropouts in fast food frontlines. Stephen Colbert once quipped to an economist, "When do we just all become waiters passing around the same salad?"

But in the services world, I can help a content creation company produce material for a student, by mashing together user interface design and content services. Real value is created from the sale. As a bonus, I work in educational sectors and promoting knowledge also increases economic value during later transactions. In short I believe that if I focus on educational needs and others focus on UX and XML, then everyone benefits.

For this to work it takes buckets of focus, because each contributor has to do their very best. Services have to be hard to duplicate at the instant they are provided or else commoditization creeps in. The idiom is "Jack of all trades, master of none."

Rather than blather, here's two who have said it better:

"...be good at one thing rather than bad at many" ~ Keith Ferazzi late in a recent People and Projects podcast

"...hedgehog..." ~ Jim Collins. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't (Amazon Affiliate link)