Building Business Ecosystems can be complex to build, let alone explain. I have been working on an evolving Ecosystem Business Model for some time.

So many people are unable to explain Business Ecosystems, especially to others and it holds its evolution back. Let me explain some of my thinking here

I visualized a starting point nearly all should be familiar with, of the Business Model Canvas, by Alexander Osterwalder, drawn from his PhD thesis, supervised by Yves Pigneur (2004), called a business model ontology.

This BMC become a phenomena to enable us to easily describe what building blocks need to be considered for building a business model. As a visual chart it enabled us all to build a picture. It allowed us to describe, design, challenge, invent, explain and eventually recognize where to pivot your business model.

That business model canvas tends to stay rooted (or designed) in the single entity in its intention and as Business Ecosystems involve multiple and diverse stakeholders it helps but, in my opinion, does not reflect the design needed for these Ecosystem models.

In my view “In today’s interconnected world, businesses are increasingly operating within complex ecosystems. Traditional business models often fail to capture the dynamics and interdependence of these ecosystems, leading to missed opportunities of significant competitive advantage and exposure to increased risks that others are recognizing changes and equally on the hunt for new Business Models”

We need to build an Ecosystem Business Model story

• The strengths of building any (Ecosystem) Business model is its need to account for achieving a common, shared language for discussing and understanding its potential.

• Any visual should start with a base of simplicity, something that can be grasped or explained quickly to enable the initial design. I believe the ones shown here achieve that.

• It does need to be iterative in its development of refinements through dialogues, validating and constant feedback as managing a diverse set of stakeholders, often in diverse areas needs anchoring, then exploring mutual values and contributions or resolving disagreements.

• I am working on the principle of do not try to capture everything at once, there are relationships and consequences as you visualize and explore this that evolve over time.

To address the complexity of Ecosystems

Business ecosystems are complex and often chase down challenges that potentially offer levels of uniqueness and significant improvement on what is existing. They can be expensive to build and do take the design and thinking through a fairly dedicated process of explore, exploit and resolve. They need to build a compelling business case.

To retain some simplicity here while address the complexity of ecosystems I have “layered” it for firstly, keeping the initial frame as one of learning the basic building blocks, the make up of their components to consider.

I certainly believe we go through a progressive elaboration. As you gain a deeper understanding and engage in different stakeholder discussions you needs to “accept or reject” and require multi-layered frame or canvas approaches to progress in any Ecosystem Business model design.

As more detail or understanding takes shape be this strategic and operational you also recognize you need to capture and evaluate these in their interdependencies- one of the unique needs in evaluating Ecosystems.

I believe we do need to move beyond the single entity business model and summarized my progress on building the arguments for Business Ecosystems here and where I have moved trough Innovation Ecosystems into Business Ecosystems

Initial Ecosystem Business Model Frame

The need here is to build a common language or understanding of how and what to focus upon, to move you through the initial assessment of wheres the value, what are the complexities and considerations needed in early viability of this concept in return potential, value, costs, time and resource commitments. This enables those involved to confront the realities, recognize the gaps, manage expediencies and begin to figure out the development costs and returns.

Are the right people and stakeholders around the table, who wants to drop out and who needs to be attracted in. Within the early stages there is a lot to understand, change and resolve before a coherent design emerges to the next stage.

When you are bringing together diverse stakeholders, each holding a key part of an emerging puzzle or solution part, the “ebb and flow* needs recognition of who is leading, call this the orchestrator, and who is an essential stakeholder necessary or provider of solutions or just supporting actor.

Moving to the next phase, the Ecosystem building blocks to extend out the design and validation

There are key interactions and you move into interdependencies and many of these become cross-cutting so you need to build visual clues in use of colors, line thickness and symbols to represent different types of relationships, interactions and emerging value or operating needs.

The components to build up these Ecosystem Business Model building blocks is around seventy (70 )that need to be mapped, evaluated and recognized for achieving a more comprehensive framework. This becomes the validating stage to “push on” or stop and rethink.

It can be hard work and needs significant facilitation.

I would always recommend an external one as they can act as arbitrators, prompters and seek common ground from vested parties. This can come from engaging through workshops and background briefing papers informing and triggering common understanding or points of understanding and disagreement that can be addressed and emphasized.

A set of logical flows determines this. You have to often restate 1) why this matters, 2) have a initial vision of value creation and why this needs sharing and constant validation 3) refer to which part of the framework you are exploring or resolving, 4) revisit the assessment progress and its collaborative nature, alignment fit and partnering assessment, 5) the growing benefit and value of what it delivers, & 6) a constant what’s next or call to action.

It is important to stress and constantly draw out concerns about the complexity within any evaluation assessment, why the common frame can simplify and establish structure. There is a time and resource commitment that is serious needing to map back constantly to long-term benefits, costs and returns in the component evaluations.

The importance of a robust Ecosystem Business Model

The time I have taken on understanding the needed building blocks, the components that need to be explored and built into this, have taken significant time.

They form my IP and I have mapped these in a more extensive way that has moved the original component assessment for the initial model to the final validation assessment from 40 to 70 to eventually a triggering and component check list of around 160 aspects to be considered. That makes it comprehensive in taking Business Ecosystem thinking and designs into a robust, unique business model offering, worth investing in.

I share this outlined design frame here, clearly to advance Business Ecosystems and provides (here at least) a framework that enable individuals, groups and (multiple) organizations to begin to organize their conversations into the building blocks to explain and build Ecosystem conversations.

For those interested to explore this further then please get in touch. My role is to facilitate and coach and advise through workshops and mentoring on different commercial arrangements and ecosystem building offerings.