A New Perspective on Ecosystem Strategy
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.
Through the use of the Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE) blueprint it is designed to support the move towards a collaborative ecosystem environment for incumbents, disruptors and those catching up, on the recognition of the value of ecosystems within their business.
In this short series 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 comparisions in their competitive field. It builds out different ecosystem approaches to show value, weakness and further opportunities, applying Ecosystem thinking and design applications.
In today’s rapidly shifting business landscape, the organizations that thrive are the ones that understand, design, and orchestrate their ecosystems — not just their products, services, or markets. Yet, despite widespread talk of ecosystems, many companies struggle to see the full picture: how their platforms, partnerships, and market alignment interact to create competitive advantage.
That is where the Intelligent Business Ecosystem (IIBE) Lens comes in. Unlike conventional frameworks, the IIBE Lens provides a rich, practical, and actionable way to evaluate ecosystems — revealing their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities in a way that executives can act on immediately.
The full IIBE blueprint is a diagnostic systematic approach designed to assess how well an organisation is designed to operate, adapt and evolve through ecosystems, especially under changing market conditions.
Why the IIBE Lens Matters
Most business assessments focus narrowly on one dimension: technology, market size, or partnerships. The IIBE Lens takes a broader, integrated view, showing how ecosystems function as dynamic, interdependent networks. It enables organizations to:
- See their ecosystem clearly: Understand the maturity, health, and appeal of their network.
- Recognize distinctive differences: Benchmark against peers and competitors meaningfully.
- Identify opportunity and risk: Highlights where orchestration, partnerships, or platform investment could unlock growth.
Whether you are in energy, industrial automation, mobility, or technology platforms, the IIBE Lens provides clarity on how ecosystems interact with markets, partners, and emerging trends.
What the Lens Offers
Looking through the IIBE Lens allows organizations to:
- Understand Market Alignment: Evaluate how effectively your ecosystem meets the needs of key customer segments and emerging markets.
- Assess Partner and Platform Strength: See which parts of your ecosystem attract partners and drive adoption.
- Compare Competitors: Recognize how peers orchestrate their ecosystems and where gaps or advantages lie.
- Inform Strategic Decisions: Use clear insights to prioritize investments, partnerships, and internal capabilities.
Deliberately designed:
- They speak to present-tense leadership anxiety to clarify and plot future ambition
- These lenses act as recognition mechanisms, not consulting tools but conversational change
- They clarify positions to understand any future design and actions
- They avoid potential entrapment, provide a deepening understanding of ecosystem conditions
- They explain how ecosystems should work and are behaving
- They surface constraints that might otherwise be invisible for supporting design choices
The lens approach has and can be applied across organizations of varying size, sector, geography, and ecosystem maturity, showing that the lens is adaptable, insightful, and practical in every context.
Examples from Our Analysis
In building the case for this approach, we have examined companies across different industries and maturities:
- Industrial & Energy: Siemens, GE Vernova, ABB, Schneider Electric
- Platforms & Technology: Salesforce, Alibaba, Stackit
- Industrial Equipment & Manufacturing: John Deere, Honeywell, Mitsubishi, Hitachi
- Emerging Energy & Innovation Leaders: Enel, Northvolt
These analyses have revealed distinctive ecosystem stories: some organizations excel in platform pull and partner networks, others show opportunities to strengthen orchestration, and many are discovering that market-fit differs by segment. Across all examples, the IIBE Lens highlights where action can create advantage — not just for comparison, but to inform investment and growth strategy.
Within an evaluation through the IIBE lens you discover both a clarification of your ecosystem approach and positioning, but it highlights a number of uncomfortable truths that are potentially leaving real opportunity and value on the table, often restricting growth and collaborative opportunities that your competitors can leverage with a more “focused” lens on those real value points lie.
Setting Up the Series
This post serves as a gateway to a series on how different lenses offered in Client Solutions provide the insights and understanding for exploring the Ecosystem design that supports your strategy. This client introduction explainer provides more details
Let’s start here by explaining what the IIBE Lens offers– it provides:
- Single-Organization Deep Dives: Full analysis of a company’s ecosystem through the IIBE Lens.
- Comparative Benchmarking: Side-by-side comparisons of two or more organizations to highlight differences, strengths, and areas for improvement.
- Sector or Thematic Insights: Lessons distilled across multiple companies within an industry or platform type.
Within this short series it is designed to help executives see their own ecosystem through a more informed and structured lens by giving business case examples of well- known companies making their decisions that are grounded in real-world comparisons and comparable insights.
Why This Matters to You
Ecosystems are no longer optional — they are the arena where future competitive advantage is won. Companies that fail to recognize differences, gaps, and opportunity windows risk falling behind, even if their products and services are strong.
The IIBE Lens provides a practical, repeatable approach to:
- Recognize where your ecosystem is strong or vulnerable
- Compare your positioning against peers and sector leaders
- Identify where strategic investment, partnerships, or orchestration can make the biggest difference
By looking through the IIBE Lens, organizations gain clarity, foresight, and a concrete foundation for action, rather than relying on vague notions of ecosystem potential.
The different lenses are part of the IIBE blueprint that offers a diagnostic systematic approach to support organisations to design, operate, adapt and evolve through ecosystems, especially under changing market conditions.
The Client Solutions we offer provide a clear pathway for potential clients at every level of Ecosystem thinking and maturity from start-ups, through disruptors to todays known Ecosystem providers to deepen and evolve their Ecosystem thinking through focused application and advice.
Next in this series: We provide a benchmark comparison of Siemens, GE Vernova, ABB, and Schneider Electric, showing how distinctive ecosystem approaches create real-world differences in partner pull, platform appeal, and market alignment.
Why not reach out and have a conversation on your intent and ecosystem ambitions