Picking back up the series on what decentralization is good for (part 1, part 2), today I want to focus on one of the most exciting aspects of decentralization: growth.  

In this case, when I say "decentralized", what I really mean is "open and non-proprietary".  The two often go hand-in-hand.

Ok, so why are open, decentralized systems especially good for growth?  When a technology is open (anyone can use, extend, modify, build on) and decentralized (no one party or company is in full control), it has the potential to spread like wildfire, for exactly those reasons.  Since it is free to use without restriction, permissionless innovation is possible -- meaning anyone who feels like it can pick it up and run.  And because open, decentralized systems reduce platform risk, developers can feel comfortable building on them with less of a risk of getting the carpet pulled out from under them.

When this works, it works really well. Many of the technologies we use every day -- like HTTP, SMTP, WiFi, USB and Bluetooth -- have become ubiquitous precisely because they are open, nonproprietary and decentralized in nature (in addition to being useful!). 

Everyone knows that it's safe to build to the Bluetooth standard without platform risk.  And what that means is that anyone, no matter what company they are with, or what country they live in, has the potential to grow the platform.  This kind of omni-directional growth is really only possible with open, un-owned, decentralized technologies.  

Often times, however, a single company drives the development of these open, un-owned, decentralized technologies.  For example, the General Transit Feed Specification is on open data format that powers most of the public transit industry.