In today’s interconnected business landscape, success is no longer just about listening to your customers or partners. It’s about understanding and leveraging your entire ecosystem.
In the complex web of modern business, success is no longer solely determined by individual companies, but by the strength and resilience of entire ecosystems. Just as we’ve learned to value the Voice of Customer (VoC) and Voice of Partner (VoP), it’s time we embrace the Voice of Ecosystem (VoE).
Enter Voice of Ecosystem (VoE) – the next evolution in strategic business intelligence.
Feeling trapped, break out of the box with Innovation Business Ecosystems
I have been investing a growing amount of time in building my understanding of Business Ecosystems and from one of my AI chats I really do get some wonderful “nuggets” of thinking.
It does continue to amaze me within a stream of exchanges or prompts how you are sparked into another strand of thinking that continues to build your understanding or simplify a part that can be complicated to explain.
One of these “popped up” while I was trying to relate Natural Ecosystems with Business Ecosystems and I asked a follow on a prompt around mind shifts “What are the principles of the mind shift to bring structure to recognizing different changes in thinking from existing business thinking to make the bridge into fresh thinking needed for Business Ecosystem thinking.”
I simply loved this reply as so clear and defined for changing thinking.
Eight principles for bridging traditional thinking into Ecosystem thinking
I closed out my posts in 2023 reflecting on the “golden” threads that need to weave through innovation business ecosystems. So equally I share these four threads here again as they are so important to Business Ecosystem thinking and design going forward.
I raised the ecosystem thinking and design story ““At the heart of this story lies the understanding that innovation is NEVER a solitary endeavor; it thrives really well within ecosystems.
Just imagine these ecosystems as intricate and interconnected sets of networks, bustling with activity, with thinkers and doers, where individuals, organizations, and institutions converged with a shared goal – to innovate and create value“
The value of business ecosystems needs to be highly dynamic. Four threads need to weave through innovation ecosystem designs“
Dynamics and Knowledge are essential to your future
Dynamism and knowledge insights are crucial to unlocking and stimulating new ideas or thinking. It is all about actively shaping thoughts or insights to navigate the changing terrain.
We do need to actively navigate the rapidly changing business landscape in multiple ways it is not just about reacting to external forces. It’s about proactively shaping the direction and actively participating in the evolution of your industry, your positioning and your own insights.
In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, the ability to build a strong case, stay informed, and think critically is the key to unlocking success and driving innovation.
I have been looking at different ways to pitch Business Ecosystems recently for some evolving and hopefully sustaining work.
You can “pitch” to clients in several different ways. Some know their problems, while others don’t recognize them until they are prompted or confronted. If you have a tried and tested way to solve problems, you can become a little blocked from considering something that looks on the surface as radically different, but underneath might be the pathway (to salvation) for new sustaining solutions.
Pitching business ecosystems has to gain attention and be seen as a (radically) different way to tackle growing complex and challenging business problems. The problem for many is that it does “confront” them in considering the multiple layers of what this might mean regarding changes in mindset, organization thinking, and design, rethinking trust by opening up to others outside your existing network and adapting to a new way of design and thinking.
I will tackle different approaches over several posts, but first, let’s look at organizational strategies and the distinct advantages Business Ecosystems can have compared to the more traditional ways of tackling challenges today.
Paradigm shifts come from collective learning within a Business to build different Ecosystems.
How can we realize the power of ecosystem thinking and design and its growing value to enterprises? This will come through collective learning, exchanging and exploring a diversity of opinions and experiences. Achieving alternative perspectives enables a level of discovery that enables innovation
it is the need to embrace new organizational design that Ecosystem thinking needs to be considered for building a different approach to the new business needs based on the recognition that the way we approach management in markets is going through radical change.
Today, we face fast-changing markets, constant change and growing complexity; customers are opening up to different and diverse experiences, and it is learning and gaining new understanding and knowledge that will give us the more significant potential to expand and build out new value and growth opportunities.
Ecosystem thinking and design require continuous collective learning.We require different conversations.
I believe dynamic ecosystems require a richer understanding of the characteristics, environmental factors, and critical differences that can shape the dynamism of the business system.
This post highlights the essence of Dynamic Ecosystems and how they differ or provide active support for other ecosystem models, as they do have different roles to play in Ecosystem thinking and design:
The significant value and success of the Integrated Framework for Innovation Ecosystems needs to be constantly tracked and measured.
Measuring the Multifaceted Impact is essential and radically different from how we usually approach measuring and collecting metrics.
As I previously mentioned in a recent post, “The Dynamics of Being Connected for Innovation Ecosystems.”this draws out the multifaceted approach. In the four key components, value creation needs to extend beyond (just) financial metrics; it should include social and environmental impacts in the future. Secondly, the value of knowledge transfer is all about accelerated innovation learning and seeking diverse experiences and expertise to optimize this from the network exchanges and discovery involved. Thirdly, Co-creation should constantly be looking for novelty or originality in impact, searching to continually improve customer experience and satisfaction by adding customer benefits and ways and means to improve market positioning. Fourthly, looking to assess competitive positions across the ecosystem from the partnership gives a diversity of viewpoints of opportunity to alternative market access to give a broader impact or range of options for competitive strategies.
In any connected innovation ecosystem, l see four main components that must be explored, connected and built out. These are connecting value creation, knowledge transfer, co-creation and competitive positioning. Recognizing these as interconnected builds on the core of what we already have; we make our innovation activities more dynamic and integrated, looking to provide further impact.
I have been building a framework for Business Innovation Ecosystems under “Integrated Framework for Innovation Ecosystems” and have outlined the connected story and explored the four components in my last post in their descriptive meaning in some detail.
In this post, I have taken each component, breaking down their contributions in the interconnectedness they provide and how they anchor the navigating of the dynamic nature of innovation and then provide the multifaceted impacts beyond just measuring metrics that significantly “lift” collaborations and give greater weight on ecosystem thinking and design.
The interplays and interfaces available from technology and AI applications available to us today can deliver completely different, more compelling innovations. I have been looking at the combination effect of humans, technology and AI in this new interplay on my paul4innovating.com site.
Within this research, I have been questioning how innovation has changed in the last ten years but, more importantly, how design thinking will adapt due to this technology and AI adoption as the avenue of future exploration.
Couple this with Ecosystem thinking and design, and we are moving towards a different, more integrated framework for innovation ecosystems. I provided the story for Innovation Ecosystems as needed to be explained in a previous post.
I see four main components within innovation ecosystems that must be expanded to give this framework meaning. Value creation, knowledge transfer, co-creation and competitive positioning.
