chapter 05 FROM PUZZLE TO KALEIDOSCOPE: PLATFORMS AND MARKETPLACES A puzzle can have ten or 10,000 pieces, but the image they make up when they all come together is static. In contrast, a kaleidoscope with the same number of colored pieces can generate a number of possible images that seems infinite. Future of Visa Developer Center platform Current technologies in the world of “liquid reality” - as the sociologist Zygmunt Bau- is to become a marketplace where FinTech man describes the hyperconnected society - are transforming the puzzle industries into kaleidoscopes. They are breaking the sequential dynamics of value chains in entrepreneurs, banks and any independent which well-defined intermediaries transfer between each other a piece of the process.. developer may generate innovations. The technologies open a multitude of possible paths between someone who wants something and someone who offers it. A. Cueli How do they do it? By diminishing the asymmetry of information. Instead of having VP of FinTech Engagement, Visa Miami to go to specific places and complete a series of steps to ask for a taxi, with Uber you have the information of who has a car nearby that can take you at this moment to a certain place. Instead of having to go to specific intermediaries to get a job or to find someone with a specific skill, with LinkedIn or Freelancer you have real-time information about the supply and demand of jobs and skills. More and more industries enter into the logic of platforms and marketplaces; digital spaces that enable context data to create infinite possibilities in environments where there was a very rigid client-provider logic before. A TWO-WAY PATH 60