A Guide for Ecosystem Business Model Building for Mid-Sized Firms

Building the Mid-sized Ecosystem Business Model

Building Ecosystem Business Models for Mid-Sized Firms are so often under-looked in much of the literature we are referred too. We get caught in the bigger players, often provided by the large consultant companies, for our references- such as Alibaba, Salesforce, Amazon, Apple, Siemens, etc,.

How can Mid-sized Business Organizations set about to build out an Ecosystem Business Model using third party providers for platforms, communication technology, data analysis and use of Gen AI?

Are these as expensive as initially feared, can they work as effectively as those provided for the bigger players offering Ecosystem solutions? You need to build out a projection of possible budgets for costs in the first year and then annual ongoing ones. Ecosystem building often runs into sometimes hundred of millions of dollars but taking a really small step I (really) hesitate here, but $2.0m to $3.0m for the first year to eighteen months provides you your dedicated Ecosystem, and yearly $1m, including team costs BUT it so depends. It is where you take this, in recognizing its value, diversity to your business and worth, determines where you take this out.

So please take these numbers as only a starters point to get your levels of interest up or otherwise I recommend you don’t bother to read the rest of the post! Scaling, then the numbers rise fast but so can the accelerated returns!

This is only a brief guidance to get you to relate and see if the “ecosystem juices” are flowing. It is not comprehensive but it does go into a starting point of a Mid-sized firms starting point to Business Ecosystems. Even if I hear some readers mutter these numbers are crazily low you have a initial framework to build up into a project

I want to here address a number of questions any organization contemplating this building a ecosystem would need to go through. There are a good few more but lets limit this to a level where they can be absorbed and then I suggest to go further then come and ask me.

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What I see in the Integrated Business Ecosystem

By integrating your Business Ecosystem

I do, it seems, work a lot on integrating systems. So much of this work is specifically focused on advancing innovation in processes, design, and flows through applying Ecosystem thinking and design. So much of what we discover seems to always fall between gaps in how we organize this into a cohesive whole getting to a commercial conclusion.

There are many reasons, for example, it could be in the handover from one person to another or team to team, it could be the ignoring of aspects that seemed unimportant earlier on, ignored as a concept progresses and completely forgotten at the final stages, yet this insight or nugget of information held the key to unlocking a discovery moment. We seem bad at integrating our thinking or processes, hence my constant “quest” to find ways to bring things together for integrated thinking and designs.

This is why I focus on Ecosystems in thinking and design. The other day I picked up on something in my research I felt was important within Business Ecosystems thinking. It took a while to put this into the understanding that “really” seems to talk to me and I hope you

Let me explain as I think it is important:

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The Core Distinctiveness Of Business Ecosystems

The Core Distinctiveness of Business Ecosystems

The need is to recognize that Business Ecosystems do need to be distinctive to succeed. They are complex and challenge much of what and how we undergo Business today.

Business Ecosystems do matter. Briefly they can transform the linear value chains we have in place today and make them more dynamic value networks. By expanding beyond existing and our traditional borders and markets we can create those potentially exponential growth opportunities. We can provide enhanced and highly interconnected customer value and through the selection of partners within the Ecosystem network we can can build real, sustaining competitive advantage.

Recognizing different thinking and design

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