Part-way through 2022, I drew up a list of my focal points in researching, stimulating my thinking and finding different validation points on my Ecosystem thinking and design approaches. In early January this year, I took a stop, more a reflective period in these past months, to deepen down even further my knowledge of Ecosystem thinking and design. I aim to achieve, even advancing, Ecosystem understanding for those interested to learn and seeking advice through direct engagements.
My main focus on Ecosystems comes from the innovation perspective. How can we finally combine all the different parts of the Innovation system into one, fully connected up and achieve a far more open design where contributors, both inside and outside organizations, can contribute as it is the diversity of experience needed today to give fresh value and impact on complex and challenging issues, We need that discovery to commercialization fully connected up to be leveraged fully in all the diversity of contributions.
Innovation in its challenges and problems has become more complex and challenging, both in solutions offered and in working out all the connected parts to provide products or services that are superior to the existing ones. The need to provide that essential “dynamic” of having customer engagement in their data, a growing network of connected partners providing their input, their exploring and experimenting so the inventor can learn and seek to improve the product or service accordingly.
Recognizing that Ecosystems within Business (B2B) are still only emerging
Our understanding of innovation is changing; we are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into open and far more collaborative innovation (external orientation), with our collective thinking offering the acceleration into improving our innovation performances, leading to higher chances of achieving greater impact and success.
The search for all the necessary connectivity and interrelated parts of any Ecosystem design as it is seemingly to find greater value, which will increasingly coalesce around different innovation ecosystems. Complexity is rising, and offering discrete products is on the wane as they often do not connect to the (exact) requirements of the user or consumer. Products need to be more connected and offer engagement.
Firstly Platforms are the real force as the mechanism of change.
To understand Ecosystems, you need an understanding of Platforms. In the past twelve months, the work of Professor Marshall Van Alstyne (Boston and MIT), Professor Geoff Parker (Dartmouth and MIT), Sungett Paul Choudary (Platform Revolution), Peter C Evans (McFadyen and Platform Strategy Institute), along with the voluminous work of Simone Cicero (CEO at Boundaryless. Inventor of Platform Design Toolkit), Matthias Walter (fastbreak. one and Platform Innovation Kit) and many more all feed into Platform designs and thinking. It takes time to absorb all the outputs from this distinguished set of platform thinkers to add even further to my Ecosystem understanding.
Firstly why are business ecosystems emerging as a real competitive force?
As we begin to open up our thinking and begin to focus on the concept of ecosystems, it will increasingly have a powerful effect on our future growth perspectives in considering alternatives and possibilities. Different partners’ networks will all contribute to this often ‘emergent’ thinking and quickly increase the total sum of the value.
“Opening up our thinking towards ecosystems will have a powerful effect…….
it alters the way we will approach problems today and in the future”
The single industry and business-specific approaches, so successful in past years, are seeing change; many companies are exploring the value of becoming involved in a business ecosystem that crosses a variety of industries to build new communities that have the capacity to transform existing environments.
The increasing value of participating in ecosystems allows large and small organizations to create, scale, and serve markets in previously unimaginable ways. The ability to interact and co-create in increasingly sophisticated and novel ways opens up new opportunities. These ecosystems form a bond of shared interest, recognition, and purpose, quickly becoming the new ‘commons’ in sharing and contributing.
I enjoy exchanges on Ecosystems with Alex Pesjak (ANDfutureproof) and a talented group of three pioneers of Lauren Fleiser, Trevor Gordon and Thomas Poedenphant, building the collective community, a leading support system for multi-stakeholder ecosystems. It is well worth joining and getting involved.
My realization becomes one of embracing innovation ecosystems.
Today, this growing realization that thinking ecosystems allow for a new frame and mindset that taps into different and diverse relationships, partnerships, alliances, and collaborations unthinkable without the enablers to make these connections through technology and more open platforms, you can come together and collaborate.
So I took a deeper view of what to focus on in research, understanding and exploring to continue building out my Ecosystem value proposition and thinking to others.
My present position of Ecosystem thinking and design
I set myself a series of tasks to extensively research Ecosystems and map these back to areas I needed to investigate to achieve a better understanding of Ecosystem thinking, constantly relating this back to Innovation Ecosystems
I found applying a selected “natural language generation” technique as helpful. This post summarizes my search for “Business Innovation Ecosystems“. Here, I found that much as “Innovation Ecosystems” was a rich data set, the “Business Ecosystems” one was much richer. This is where I pick up from by focusing on Business Ecosystems initially and then mapping this back into Innovation Ecosystems.
I wrote a post, “Why Innovation Ecosystems?” pointing out that Innovation is still far too linear. We need to embrace system thinking finally and apply Ecosystem thinking, and design helps achieve that.
Points of focus in delivery and stimulation during the past four months have fully covered or partly covered these needs to understand and form opinions around. These have built a deeper understanding of my work in the past four years, gaining and providing insights to others.
Firstly, Ecosystems within Business (my core) are still only emerging but need foundation building.
So my focal points in the past few months has been gathered around Ecosystems in the following ways:
- Conditions (for change validation)
- Mechanisms (to have in place- Network, Governance and Platforms)
- Building core Ecosystem arguments (the way to do things)
- Provide a series of general ecosystem triggers and thoughts (light bulb moment)
- Resolve / Discuss Barriers, Conditions, Management Receptivity, Shift and Architecture differences
- Recognizing the value of Ecosystems (align and accelerate in value, growth and impact)
- Thoughtful and Planned approach to Ecosystems
- Considerations- changing current reality and working approaches
- Painting the transformation journey, dealing with pressures and barriers to overcome
- The argument of a Platform Strategy to build upon- essential to know why
- Build a Business Case portfolio and a Go-to reference point for leading and best of class
- Tackling Common language and Definitions
- ANCHOR: Innovation Ecosystems- bringing out differences and new benefits
- Building Roadmaps, Mindmaps for getting clear, comfortable, and aware of needs
Point of growing Reference: www.ecosystems4innovating.com
So far, I have built around sixteen Ecosystem Mindmaps and seven platform mindmaps to capture and trigger thinking. I find mind maps a terrific way to capture and quickly recall information. I find I refer to these constantly.
So the challenge is for organizations to think differently.
Firstly, thinking about ecosystems allows you to go out of normal scope; it allows you to open up your thinking to exploring the unimaginable of the past and transform this past ‘norm’ into the practice of your future. We see that the most valuable companies emerging today are largely based on sophisticated platform business models where ecosystems are vital to their health.
There is a caveat to this need to change.
The more disruptive you seek to make your solution, the more the ecosystem must be shaped, changed, well-managed, governed, and created. Ecosystems are hard, demanding and complex work. If you commit to an ecosystem design, be ready to challenge everything, and you will probably end up changing everything!
Placing a new product in an existing ecosystem, or worse, ignoring the wider ecosystem potential and then expecting a total solution, means your product or service will have little impact and quickly become a commodity as it lacks the dynamics of co-creation, open collaborations and customer involvement. The “dependence” factor, the inter-relationship dependence is there for taking a broader Ecosystem thinking into your design as it builds up new building blocks around your basic concept; it builds the connected value.
Ecosystems are powerful; if you are not so comfortable with what this would mean, there is no better opportunity to begin finding out.
