Making the additional case for building innovation ecosystems

Business is undoubtedly changing. Many businesses are reluctant to change from the past industrial era or how they buy their software solutions. We have not fully absorbed or translated the impact of the digital effect or how technology has become such a huge enabler. We need to recognize the activity achieved across the organization or multiple organizations actively collaborating around a “given” innovation concept is providing the sustaining value, impact and growth by solving harder, more challenging and complex problems.

Innovation and Business ecosystems are dynamic and interconnected communities of individuals, organizations, and institutions that collaborate to accelerate the development and commercialization of new ideas, products, and services. They foster open innovation, where knowledge and resources are shared freely among participants, leading to exponential growth in the generation and implementation of innovative solutions.

The rising expectations from technology are ‘running way ahead’ of our ability to transform organizations to be digitally ready. We need to make more transformational leaps. Artificial Intelligence has become an equal partner to humans in knowledge and insights.

Today, we find collaborative environments that are far more connected and open, simple yet intelligent to reduce complexity, fast and scalable as the frequency and collaboration needs are changing. All are placing increased demands on the organization. Connecting knowledge across organizations through technology becomes essential, sharing this in diverse networks of expertise and partners is a must.

With the consistent onslaught of social media, the potential of cloud computing and the increasing reliance on mobile or smartphones, the pressure is on organizations to adapt and respond accordingly. Consumer expectations are dramatically shifting to looking to be part of a “connected experience” where their demands and needs are customized, and they are constantly seeking higher levels of personal gratification.

Working in Ecosystems will change the nature of business activities.

Ecosystems will have the potential to expand capabilities and enable experiences beyond anything possible today in the present ‘disconnected’ world, where technology is not playing the significant part it can do.

It is by the very nature of the interaction and interdependence in relationships that is driving this need to participate in an interconnected system, one that is looking to create and allocate new business value, acting together, that offers the potential for the outcomes to be greater than the sum of the individual parts and it will be technology driven.

Recognizing the significant changes underway, let’s look at many parts of today’s environment that are coming together to create the conditions for a ‘perfect storm’ that we must navigate through.

Multiple elements combine to drive change.

• Businesses have a growing need to find new competitive battle zones as they exhaust the traditional ones.
• There are these higher risks of disruption happening today across all industry sectors.
• The scramble to scale and globalize is increasing the pressure for speed, adaptation, and new outlooks.
• Customers are more sophisticated and demanding, and expectations and empowerment are rising.
• Customer experience is becoming more compelling and individualized and offering integrated experiences.
• Digital transformation, big-data analysis and the ubiquity of information are changing the knowledge game.
• Industry lines and conventions are blurring and merging through the need for technology and overhaul.
• Power is shifting from single-company offerings into platform offerings built on collaboration needs.
• The existing Business Model is increasingly under threat and shorter in its ‘shelf life” today.
• Collaborative Needs are increasingly the basis for achieving a competitive advantage.
• The reality is that every innovation and company is part of a broader, evolving ecosystem.
• Our futures are far more intertwined and dependent on others
• Technology is leading us all to an unparalleled rate of change in most of what we do in our lives.
• The reinventing of the rules of competition has dramatically opened up (startups, venture capital etc.)
• We all cannot navigate the future alone. We are becoming increasingly reliant and dependent.
• Technology offers businesses greater access to intelligence that is fast and scalable.
• There is a shift in the economic equation to collaboration, transparency and customer engagement.

These shifts are altering the business environment, and organizations have got to find solutions to address these, as these shifts are increasingly making the environment highly complex to navigate through. Ecosystem thinking and design are critical to fully understand for capitalizing on the abilities to resolve more complex challenges today in radically different connected ways.