We are possibly at a series of inflexion points in our current business environment. Here’s one you will be required to address.
What seems to be occurring increasingly in many different market spaces is defining an opportunity that directly impacts the current status quo and then seeking to make some radical moves to achieve that differentiation. Technology is a fundamental disrupter or enabler; it is the catalyst for making this change.
Markets are changing significantly, and collaboration and partnerships are rapidly forming and coalescing around the concept of Ecosystem thinking and Platform design. This potentially is a radically different business entity design.
These might already be happening around you, changing the accepted market space or definition. Still, you are reluctant to recognize their impact or be ready to make the level of change needed to ‘ready yourself’ for all the potential disruption or different thinking these Business Ecosystem designs require and bring. Shifting to a different business model or business design is hard, complicated and systematic work. The last thing it needs is to be rushed.
So often, we all get caught out by looking at market conditions through the established lens and not the different ones we need. So often, the entrenched player, who has so much vested interest and legacy, chooses to ignore the growing reality. Often it is simply “the fears of the unknowns.“
The emergence of Business Ecosystems is one of those potential areas to understand the future impact.
The emergence of Business Ecosystems ( links to my dedicated Ecosystem posting site) is upon us; it is coming in different ways and at different speeds. The underlying technology platform (backbone) forms the growth engine of transactions that lead to discovery, creativity and new value creation. Transaction in knowledge exchange and flows, partnership collaborations or access to common applications and process designs. It has the necessary right platform that scales and can adapt.
It recognizes the change in business model, changing how we operate and what and how we focus in different, more open ways that need pulling together; otherwise, others will steal the momentum and the market shifts, and you are left behind—the market reforms around a different type of solution that offers greater value to the buyer.
Ecosystems will change the nature of business activities. Let me take four of these:
- Ecosystems will have the potential to expand capabilities and enable experiences beyond anything possible today in the present world that most of our business organizations operate in, ones that are operating in their own ‘disconnected’ world, internally focused, constrained by limited technology connection and resources.
- Ecosystems open up the world. They connect it for richer access to diversity and different sets of discoveries not possible within one organization’s current capabilities or capacities. It is highly collaborative and interactive.
- Gaining a network of thriving relationships. This very nature of opening up, interacting, and building a growing relationship interdependence is driving the new innovation potential. One is looking to create and explore new greater business value by acting and collaborating together, having a position appreciating common and shared goals, which offers the potential for outcomes to be greater than the sum of the individual parts.
- An urgent need to coalesce around complex challenges. As our world becomes more complex, ecosystems offer ways to coalesce around those sorts of challenges, bringing together within the ecosystem community the potential to build, solve, share and exchange goals and concepts that help solve these complexities, achieved in highly collaborative ways.
Tackling potentially disruptive business models, changing revenue streams, and the process of how to operate in a more open, connected and collaborative environment with partners is potentially as big as it can get. How do we overcome the fear and see the pathway to new possibilities?
Understanding Ecosystems and how they work is becoming essential for us all to understand
Recognizing ecosystems is vital; combining humans, technology, and data allows us to pursue multiple possibilities, explore them faster than before, evaluate them in quicker, smarter ways and scale those that show promise for all of us to be more efficient, considerate and respectful of finite resources. Ecosystem designs allow us to undergo a change from individualism to revaluing community and supporting each other in resourceful ways and respecting all that is around us needs to be more balanced.
We can search for and build entirely new capabilities by connecting technology and different people.
The power of ecosystems can allow us to innovate differently, and be more designed for a sustainable future as we connect, learn and leverage diverse knowledge, experience and discipline mindset.
Business Ecosystem thinking and technology Platform design needs a well-thought-through approach, it needs depth in understanding what this all means. This is an inflexion point in transforming our business to radically open up, collaborate and build stronger, deeper networks and relationships.
I can only urge you to ‘invest’ in understanding all of what this potentially means before you are forced to embark on the level of change you will be called upon to make in the coming years, irrespective, so make it early to fully understand what is involved and what will be possible impacts.
