Category Archives: Business Ecosystems

Look around you the cross-industry or community ecosystem is exploding.

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Many of the changes that will emerge in the next twelve to twenty-four months will become more cross-industry and service ecosystems. The search is far more today looking for synergies.

Connecting into a Ecosystem is necessary to extract those collaborative synergies. It requires a host (platform provider), different apps, weblinks and consistent ways to integrate these so those using the airport or train station can navigate their way around their personal needs. It needs an ecosystem and platform management to bring this together.

We are increasingly expecting as consumers, uninterrupted connectivity, and virtual integration and that need for continued connectivity will spur new value propositions for technology and AI to take over and manage more of your daily, repetitive tasks. Continue reading →

The building of a Hydrogen Ecosystem in Europe

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The global challenge of climate change is coming rapidly to the points where it is forcing governments, businesses and knowledge organisations all over the world to mobilise behind carbon-reducing innovations, e.g. large-scale renewable energy implementation and electrification.

When it comes to innovation and leading the energy transition, Europe is showing clear leadership and in one specific and important technology, a global leader in electrolysis technology required to produce green hydrogen. The challenge today is to convert that leading position into a sustaining best of class one, that leads the world in electrolyzer expertise, production and research.

Today, Europe has a promising start, but it has significant challenges to break down the silo’s of knowledge and expertise and seize this opportunity to learn how to collaborate and build a thriving, robust and collaborative ecosystem around the building of a world-leading position in the electrolyzer market space.

At this time though, despite a promising outlook for the use of the eölectrolyzer for hydrogen, water electrolysis technology is not sufficiently mature to fit that purpose. It still is at a limited scale and is not yet at the point of the expectations building up around it. An enormous challenge lies ahead in upscaling currently available technologies to GW-scale factories required to drive forward the energy transition. Continue reading →

The power of ecosystem thinking

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“Opening up our thinking towards ecosystems will have a powerful effect,
it alters the way we will approach problems today and in the future”

Our whole understanding of innovation is changing; we are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into open and far more collaborative innovation (external orientation) with our collective thinking offering the acceleration into improving our innovation performances, leading to higher chances of achieving greater impact and success.

The search is seemingly on to find greater value, which will increasingly coalesce around different innovation ecosystems.  We need to form in many different ways significantly more relationships that increasingly matter to each organization, that add value, insight, and bring external expertise inside to work on ‘greater’ innovation solutions.

We are creating the potential to deliver innovative products and services that would not be delivered by only having the one organization attempting it. Complexity is on the rise, offering discrete products is on the wane.

Firstly why are business ecosystems emerging as a real competitive force?

Continue reading →

The ecosystem relationship of a rain forest is also how innovation can work effectively  

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Firstly I would argue that innovation, to be managed well, needs to operate like an ecosystem, the same as a tropical rainforest.

Ecosystems to flourish need to experience critical feeds, in the rain forest this is high average temperatures and significant rainfall.

Well for innovation to thrive needs critical aspects; it needs a real focus, well above average and significant attention  to be well maintained and flourish.

We argue for diversity within our innovation teams, in our thinking, in our environment and that is no different from the high levels of biodiversity in tropical rain forests.

We need this ‘richness’ of thinking, of approaches, of discovery.  We search constantly for ideas, we experiment, and we are subjected to change. We are always looking for that certain something still undiscovered. Continue reading →

What makes up a winning innovation ecosystem of design?

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So what can be gained by adopting a more innovation ecosystem approach?

As we recognize and push out through more open networking and relationships, we are opening up to new learning. We sharpen our minds and attain smarter resources as this exposes ‘us’ to new fields of expertise and knowledge that we can absorb and translate into new innovation opportunities.

As we connect and integrate this learning, we are all becoming co-creators that can arrive at different defining and shape potential. By reaching out, we operate differently, we become more engaged and open.

Let me offer four connecting themes that are shifting our ways to operate and innovate that provide a far greater set of dynamics by ’embracing’ an ecosystem collaborative design approach.

Continue reading →

The Evolving Platform Strategies in the Industrial Space

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There is far more focus on the consumer platform market where Facebook, Alibaba, Google, etc. all get the publicity and consequential high valuations to their business models. Yet, the size of the Industrial Platform market will be bigger, perhaps not in “eyeballs” but far more in economic value and growth to those that commit to these changes by collaborating through a networked designed platform ecosystem.

Redesigning a specific industry space to adapt and adjust to a platform business model is hard work. The investment in years of building internal systems is rapidly becoming worrying “legacy” issues. The new way to perform in business is through open, collaborative networks of collaborators that achieve far more growth potential by participating in an ecosystem of partners.

Strategic Industrial relationships are radically changing Continue reading →

Exploring the Innovation Technology in the Clean Energy Ecosystem

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Anyone involved in the Energy world knows how complex it has become.

It seemed as we look back at the past; we had simply one power provider, using one fossil fuel, maximizing their dedicated infrastructure and transmission lines, to then deliver to their dedicated substations and then onto the eventual consumer or customer the needed electricity or heat supply. It is radically different today for numerous reasons.

Reality is, we need to undertake a radical redesign of our entire energy ecosystem.

The consensus is that over the next twenty to thirty years, we must undergo a drastic change in our whole energy systems.

Do we understand what this means? Can we grasp the complexity of this undertaking?

I think we have some real help in understanding this through how the International Energy Agency is going about tackling the complexity will significantly help; they have mapped the entire energy system. Continue reading →

Needing three distinct Ecosystems within any Business Design

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I believe ecosystems are the new organism of the business world to innovative, network, and connect. Organize these correctly and you have a really powerful collaborative force

The three ecosystems of knowledge, innovation, and business mutually reinforce each other, it is all their interacting parts, their interdependence to each other, and how one part fits and reacts with the others, gives this great power.

We need to recognize business ecosystems are emerging as a real competitive force?

We all need to recognize that the world is changing. It is a highly connected one, built on some incredible technological advances. What is emerging as crystal clear, is that the single industry and one business-specific approach are seeing massive change, are being placed increasingly under threat of not even surviving. We require different business models to compete and it is through an ecosystem design you can extract greater value. Continue reading →

Creating A Unique Nested Hydrogen Ecosystem for the Energy Transformation

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Ecosystems hold a particular fascination for me. The ecosystem approach has the potential to tackle and help resolve some of the more complex issues we face.

We increasingly are using the word “ecosystem” to describe our environment that we operate within, but often we are diluting its accurate positioning or understanding.

Indeed unique ecosystems are hard to find and certainly to manage. One I really feel reflects a collaborative model worth explaining is the ones that are forming around Hydrogen as the alternative energy vector based on renewables. To replace or become a significant part of any entrenched energy system requires a system design approach. This part of the energy transition fits within the ‘greater’ energy system design.

Let’s look at this with some context and then the clarification that approaching Hydrogen needs a unique Ecosystem design. We are presently building a unique ‘nested’ Hydrogen Ecosystem within the Energy Transition, and it is interesting to explore, firstly, here and then in a follow-up post on one of its specific parts, the Hydrogen Council. Continue reading →

Designing our Innovation Ecosystems needs Five Considerations

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Firstly we need to put any innovation ecosystem into context. What are ecosystems, and why they are really valuable to consider when you are thinking about a more radical approach to any new innovation design?

Ecosystems are ideal for coalescing around a complex challenge, one that attracts and draws in all potential players who can contribute to sharing and relating to the challenges/goals and possible solutions, collectively. One individual’s contribution can’t solve this on its own, it needs this collaborative environment.

Ecosystems are networks of interconnected organizations, organized around one focal point, firm, or platform. They have both producers (that add intellectual value) and user-side participants (that add their experience and need), all wanting to focus and advance new value through innovation.

In any ecosystem, there is this need to recognize the value building and creation are both found upstream (producing) and downstream (consuming). It is this searching for the ‘combined effect’ that offers the more significant potential of sustaining value, by approaching new innovation in this ecosystem design approach.

So what do we need to consider for entering into an innovation ecosystem design? Continue reading →