Building blocks of ecosystem design - Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence

Why Most Boards Can’t Govern What They Can’t See to Manage Ecosystem Growth

Achieving a Clear Ecosystem Business Model line-of-site at Board Room Level

Why are Ecosystem opportunities failing? It is not from poor execution, but from poor recognition, many potentially exciting collaborations never get out of the assessment gate, mostly stuck at Board level. They climb up to the Board and then suddenly they vanish or get rejected.

This is one of the biggest frustrations being face today on building Business Ecosystems and needs changing..

Walk into any boardroom today and mention “ecosystem strategy.” You’ll get nods of agreement, enthusiastic approval, and immediate pressure to move fast. Six months later, that same initiative is stalled, the team is frustrated, and the Board is quietly wondering what went wrong.

The problem isn’t the idea. It’s not even the execution. The problem is that Boards are approving ecosystem commitments without understanding what they’re actually committing to and these risks make them very uncomfortable to take. What if that can change?

Comparing Industrial Ecosystem Strategies Through the IIBE Lens

Comparisons through the IIBE Lens for Ecosystem Opportunities

So the question here is “What the IIBE Lens reveals that Strategy reviews so often fail or miss in their assessments.” Ecosystems over time naturally build “tensions” progressively. The aim of the IIBE lens is to identify these tensions and gaps and assist management to recalibrate their Ecosystem in more dynamic ways to evolve.

Here, we are using the Intelligent & Integrated Business Ecosystem (IIBE) Lens to compare four global industrial leaders — Siemens AG, GE Vernova, Schneider Electric, and ABB — all of whom have been evaluated previously through IIBE informed analysis.

The IIBE is a diagnostic systematic approach designed to assess how well an organization is designed to operate, adapt and evolve through ecosystems, especially under changing market conditions. It seeks out tensions, gaps and opportunities that so often cannot be named but are giving cause to growing discomfort.

The intent here, in post two of this short series, is not to explain IIBE principles, but to focus on observable outcomes through what the IIBE lens offers: how each company positions its ecosystem, how attractive and usable those ecosystems are for customers and partners, the maturity of their platforms, and where gaps or constraints remain.

Looking Through the IIBE Lens: A New Perspective on Ecosystem Strategy

Looking through the IIBE Lens at Ecosystem Opportunities

A New Perspective on Ecosystem Strategy

Executives concern themselves with their Ecosystems, in design, in what they offer and the ability to gain the collaborations required to justify the investment and commitments. Often as a real concern is “Is your Ecosystem performing” That is exactly why you should be worried if you are unsure. Are your results masking and eroding your ecosystem fitness?

Discovering understandings of partner adoption attraction, the ability to assess if your orchestration costs are rising or actually being pushed down to clients, the actual platform engagement is it transactional rather than relational. So is your Ecosystem performing, what would a structured lens provide?

Business ecosystems provide a real, sustainable and significant competitive advantage by shifting a company to a higher level of collaborative, networked value creation. Instead of just selling a single product, you are selling a “connected solution” built and supported by a web of partners, providing greater value and outcomes as a result.

In this short series during this week I will be exploring the IIBE Lens, a way of explaining Ecosystems for organizations that provides an understanding of their maturity, health and appeal, as well as providing comparisons in their competitive field. It builds out different ecosystem approaches to show value, weakness and further opportunities, applying Ecosystem thinking and design applications.

How the IIBE Delivers Measurable ROI Across Three Client Groups

Business leaders acknowledge that ecosystems are now critical to growth, innovation, and resilience, far fewer can answer a harder question:“What is the return on our ecosystem investments — and how do we know?”

The IIBE Delivers Measurable ROI Across Three different Client Groups Making Them Investable in returns and gains to advance your Ecosystem thinking.

The challenge is not a lack of activity. It is a lack of measurable clarity. Ecosystems are often positioned as strategic necessities but managed as experimental side initiatives, with limited visibility into value creation, decision confidence, or time-to-impact.

The Compelling Case to Integrated Innovation and Business Ecosystems

Designing Innovation Ecosystems as Integrated Business Ecosystems

I continue to read one report after another concerning the latest state of innovation play. These seem always to be on a repeat button and this does frustrate me. It is like a record stuck at the end unable to be switched off, constantly repeating hopefully there will be some magic intervention. With a record at the end you simple switch it off or lift the “needle” to solve the problem. Let’s do that with simply “innovation”.

Why can’t we move on from talking “just” innovation. We should be highly focused on innovation ecosystems and where they fit with integrated, interconnected business ecosystems. We need to make the connection for todays world.

So let me offer up the compelling case of putting that tired old record about innovation not working finally away and redirecting you to the equivalent of spotify as a Ecosystem solution. Just a typical example- the “excitement” of the 29th PwC Global CEO Survey stating only 50% view innovation as a critical component of their overall business strategy. Well of course innovation is dead, it is seen through the wrong lens.

Why the IIBE Matters for Each Client Group we focus upon for Ecosystem Value

In today’s business environment, it has been suggested that more than 70 % of leaders struggle with ecosystem planning, understanding, or extracting value. Many initiatives stagnate in fragmentation, misaligned purpose or slow value pathways — because ecosystems are still treated as buzzwords rather than operating systems for adaptive competitive advantage.

The Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE) is uniquely positioned to solve this exact problem: to help organisations diagnose their ecosystem health, implement structured pathways, and extract new value from their collaborative networks in practical, measurable ways.

Below is how each of our three principal client groups — Mature Ecosystem Leaders, Disruptors & Emerging Challengers, and Nascent/Laggards/Emerging Catalysts — we are suggesting how they should recognise the problem, what they need to value the most, and how a dedicated IIBE offering gives them confidence, coherence, and competitive edge.

the iibe defines the “category of need” in the ecosystem collaborative world required today

The IIBE approaches complexity in a comprehensive Ecosystem approach

The Interconnected Integrated Business Ecosystem (IIBE) is pioneering the next logic of Businesses recognising collaboration and co-creation in a world where increasing complexity cannot be solved by today’s evaluation and operating models. The need is in delivering tomorrows advantage.

Yes, the IIBE framework explicitly defines and pioneers the category of ecosystem collaborative design. Unlike many existing frameworks that focus on individual company strategies, specific capabilities, or isolated innovation efforts, IIBE provides a structured, systemic, and strategic blueprint for designing and orchestrating ecosystems as living, adaptive, co-creative systems.

“In the new economy, value is not found in what you own, but in what you can orchestrate. The IIBE frame is the engine that makes that orchestration both disciplined and achievable.”

Why Organizations need a very explicit Ecosystem Business Model

Recognizing the importance of an Ecosystem Business Model Design

We do need to recognize that Organizations are needing an Ecosystem Business Model design — and why existing models we currently apply are no longer enough. They need to be designed for the realities of Business Ecosystems, not for single organization application

Most organizations today are working on problems that no longer fit neatly inside their own boundaries. Growth, resilience, innovation, digital platforms, sustainability, data, AI, supply security, and customer experience increasingly depend on multiple independent actors acting together. Yet the dominant way we still design and evaluate business models remains firmly rooted in the logic of the single firm.

This mismatch is now a material risk, it is not allowing a more comprehensive evaluation of all the potential that can emerge from considering an Ecosystem design. It is often the reason why they so often fail, they are never explicitly designed for managing within collaborative, cross-cutting Ecosystems for example. Equally evaluations often need revisiting under a more structured approach.

Ecosystem Blind Spots — What Organisations Can No Longer See

The multiple Ecosystem blind spots faced by Organisations

One of the most dangerous risks organisations face today is not competition, disruption, or even uncertainty. It is what they can no longer see.

As value creation, resilience, and innovation increasingly move beyond organisational boundaries, many leadership teams are still operating with organisation‑centric sightlines. The result is a growing set of ecosystem blind spots — areas where exposure accumulates quietly until it suddenly becomes unavoidable.

This is not a failure of intelligence or effort.. It is a failure of fit between how organisations are governed and how their world now actually works. It is a potetial strategic gap needing to be narrowed and understood.

What Are Ecosystem Blind Spots?

Reflecting on the Essence of Ecosystems

Recognizing how connected Business Ecosystems need to be

I was just reflecting on the reasons and importance of Ecosystems. I put this together a while ago in an extended chat but felt it was worth publishing as it validates a lot of the direction for my work and the Integratd Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE).

Business Ecosystems are undervalued and often poorly used. The ability to bring together a collaborative network of partners working on a shared goal that has impact and value beyond the existing solution one organisation alone can deliver, has significant advantages to grow out and extend a business.

This introduces the essence of ecosystems: