Category Archives: Customer Seamless Experiences

Knowing the different mindsets for Business Ecosystem Thinking?

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The importance of a radical mindset shift in Business Ecosystem Design

What makes Business Ecosystems different in how we approach them, the answer lies in our mindset? Are our existing ways of approaching business design different and within this, how important is a radical mindshift in any Business Ecosystem thinking?

Business ecosystems do need to be understood as radically different from how ‘we’ have undertaken the way we have “gone about our business” and think this through for the potential promise it might offer. Most businesses operate within their protected environment of designing, building, optimising and going to market. It is very singular, and everything is channelled through them.

A single entity undergoes and contract with selected suppliers and often stays with them for many good reasons, they conduct their proprietary research, build there own concepts of products and services and undertake the build to deliver internally within their selected ecosystem of stakeholders. This works and continues to function, but up to a certain point.

Today, this often silo thinking does need to be challenged and at least an initial rethink for instance about Partner Ecosystems and the value they can bring in different approaches, thinking, market offerings and mindsets does lead on to the broader adoption of Business Ecosystems. Applying a radically different collaboration thinking for co-creation can offer significant benefits, returns and rewards.

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Specific skills and toolkits are needed for cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations.

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This month I am completing a series on cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations. This is the second post that I am sharing here on my dedicated ecosystem thinking site and also through my paul4innovating posting site, which has different audiences to discuss this with.

For me, cross-sector collaborations are becoming essential to our future in tackling highly complex challenging issues that need collaborative resolution

Cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations do have real differences and I am to draw these out and my aim is to draw these out in this series.

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Tackling interoperability is critical to resolve

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Tackling interoperability is critical.

For nearly all business entities, the ability to fully connect up the organization across people, processes, design, structures and strategies is always a work-in-progress, never worked upon to the fullest extent and rarely achieved without the most radical transformation.

I come up against the barriers to change caught up consistently in this lack of interoperability. So I have to bring it into this exploring ecosystem and platform designs posting views.

What do we miss in not having that connectivity? Recognizing silos of unconnected knowledge needs changing; we need to leverage all of our diversity and expertise. Do you really know your capabilities, competencies and capacities?

  1. Focusing on making technology work across organizations, internally and externally, with partners that share a common purpose. Our need is to find new growth engines and, more, sustaining. business value. it is our understanding to make exchanges work to enable creativity, and we need technology across processes to talk to each other- called interoperability.
  2. Uncertainty, fear of the unknown, reluctance to share and partner, or to mutually “pool” intellectual property or our research know-how in a shared collaborative effort is hard. We often hold onto our knowledge as our “source of power”, this we need to let go of and embrace a new way of believing, trusting and collaborating. We will gain far more than we lose.
  3. We must ask the important questions and fully recognize the answer to “what do we do well? How can we leverage and build out from this?” Are we investing enough time in networking, exchanging insights or building relationships? Knowing our core capabilities, competencies, and capacities is essential.

Let’s tackle one tough one- interoperability makes or breaks much of what we struggle to do -exchange knowledge.

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The difficulties of adoption for the business platform

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The adoption process

I want to relate adoption back to business platforms and anchor it in the process.

Today business platform adoption is a struggle. It needs a clear revisiting of the theory of diffusion and adoption to extract the relevant points of necessary practice.

What is vitally needed is the recognition that deciding on adopting a business platform approach has five stages or decision points to go through.

So often, platform providers automatically go to the assumption that their platform will be adopted. It simply will not without working through and gaining confirmation the five stages of adoption are clarified.

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Siemens Xcelerator Part Two- what it does

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Siemens Xcelerator Digital Business Platform

A Series of Posts exploring the what, why and how of Xcelerator- part two

In this series, I felt there is a need for a deepening or exploring of what Siemens Xcelerator is all about. What are the implications and value opportunities for customers, distributors, partners, or analysts?

My aim in three separate posts all linked here is to explore the Siemens Xcelerator, a new Digital Business Platform, firstly what it is, secondly, what it does and thirdly, how it does it.

These three posts are “looking into” Siemens. I am looking from the outside to see the value of this launch announcement of the Siemens Digital Business Platform. The launch proposal offers much. The first post I recommend reading provides context to “what Siemens Xcelerator is.”

This post is about “what it does,” from my perspective.

The real key here is the open connections between solutions and all engaged parties in the interactions

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Ecosystems, technology and innovation; the keynote at Siemens SPS Event

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Visual from Siemens Digital Industries SPS Event November 2021

This week, I enjoyed attending the Siemens SPS Event, taking technology, inspiration, and connecting innovation to a new level throughout the industrial world.Rainer Brehm’s Keynote

In the keynote of Rainer Brehm (@rainer_brehm ), the CEO of Factory Automation provided a clear understanding of what and why industrial technology is undergoing such a digital and automotive transformation and how Siemens (@siemens_industry) and their Digital Industry group was responding and offering clear leadership in this in solutions and customer support.

The SPS Event

The Siemens SPS virtual experience event focused on a digital enterprise portfolio seeking to offer technology inspiration. You can’t fail to learn of several new concepts or innovations within this portfolio provided.

You quickly recognize the powerful emergence of Ecosystems and new levels of connectivity and collaboration. These collaborations are both human and digital in form, running throughout all the sessions, over the three days, nicely weaved into the keynote to set the scene.

So much of our physical world is connecting into the digital world, and understanding the tasks of undergoing this digitalization journey has to reflect highly personal, individual concerns and choices as the starting points through assessing the collective wisdom and trends that are sweeping the world in the industrial revolution 4.0 to fit each business need.

In Rainer Brehm’s Keynote, he set the scene well.

As Rainer explains, the changes throughout the industrial sector are happening faster and faster. The critical enabler is the “usage of data.”

-Connectivity of combining a digital and real-world is proving for a more flexible and autonomous product. It enables the optimization of processes, introducing new opportunities through artificial intelligence (AI).

-Digitalization is advancing a more human-centric operation where the operator, the engineering and design benefit from adopting a digital twin approach.

-Today’s needs in manufacturing are to find a better sustainability pathway and grapple with a more transparent approach to understanding the carbon footprint of not just one part of the supply chain but to have a complete understanding.

-Customers and consumers demand this visibility and understanding of the actions being taken to offer products that are taking out carbonization and are genuinely sustaining.

-The final point in his opening remarks was that products and production needs to be resilient and highly flexible to adjust to changing demands and conditions and move towards these evolving and demanding market requirements

The growing issue Rainer rightly raised was how do we tackle these significant challenges? He continued in his keynote:

As Rainer explained, innovation cycles are getting shorter and shorter; new products are expected to be more customized than ever before, requiring a completely different manufacturing method to be initiated to accommodate this change.

Rainer sees the factory has to become even more automated and digital to adjust and adapt. To accomplish this evolution, the needs of software-enabled hardware and connectivity are becoming crucial. Today, to achieve a Digital Enterprise, one that acts fast, is intelligently adjusting to meet these ever-changing market requirements is needed.

As Rainer explained, connectivity is moving beyond simply the factory floor. Each product is today required to be designed in new ways using new technology approaches with the help of the digital twin and simulations.

Factory, production and product designs need to go beyond; solutions need to connect machines, process integrations, buildings, and warehouses along the supply change to optimize and understand the continuous data flow and improve.

Today, data needs to provide a feedback loop from production, supply, and design to produce today’s product and improve the next one. Improvements and insights in optimization, simulation for new designs and performances, and extend the machine and integrate the production line to achieve these unique and customized products in more efficient ways.

In his summing up on the Digital Enterprise, Rainer points out that digitalization and automation are the means of linking all processes from the real to the digital world in one continuous data flow that brings all stakeholders together. This increased cocreation environment includes designers, shop floor operators, engineers, analysts, and solution providers to close the feedback loop across the complete supply chain.

Rainer’s final observation came back to recognizing today one very relevant point: “sustainability will become the licence to operate.”

Siemens does do these events well to offer both broad but highly focused solutions to the needs of their customers.

Under the motto “Infinite opportunities from infinite data”, Siemens showcased solutions from its Digital Enterprise portfolio that enable companies to consistently digitalize, automate and make intensive use of the resulting data.

Four specific announcements within Rainer‘s keynote

Here in summarizing Rainer’s keynote, I  want to provide a short glimpse into four specific focal points that he announced from this keynote that support this digital and automating journey that needs different solutions or resolutions to be undertaken within the Industry.

My four exciting takeaways from the event announced by Rainer were:

Firstly, the continued integration of the Industrial IoT stack between OT & IT is where app development connects IT/ OT into the cloud, at the Edge, and finally onto the Shopfloor. This stack holds great promise for integrating the IIoT process. Siemens is taking a broad and integrated approach using Mendix and MindSphere in application and platform developments to provide customers with this robust IIoT solution.

Visual from Siemens Digital Industries SPS Event November 2021

Secondly and perhaps the most exciting is the launch of SiGREEN. This solution provides and drives decarbonization throughout the extended supply chain by focusing on high levels of carbon qualification through the use of Blockchain to keep data secure and confidential but without any mining or crypto-currency aspects.

Visual from Siemens Digital Industries SPS Event November 2021

SiGREEN is offering an open industry solution to identify the source of a product’s carbonization. The intent is to build an exact carbon footprint over the entire supply chain and offer transparency in identifying emission sources but with the confidentiality of those within the supply chain.

The solution provides a trustworthy aggregation of an overall Product Carbon Footprint across the supply chain without compromising the partners’ need for supply chain confidentiality.

Visual from Siemens Digital Industries SPS Event November 2021

It aims to quantify emissions reliably, be trustworthy, transparent, secure and efficient, in its methodology and approach, that can evaluate and where necessary certify scopes 1,2 and 3 for the complete product carbonization understanding to then find solutions to decarbonising it.

This SiGREEN solution promises to be an inspiring initiative by Siemens to fully determine the carbon footprint of products they are involved in with their declared goal of being a significant contributor to achieving a carbon-neutral industry.

Within the SiGREEN solution, the distributed and open Estanium network makes it possible to combine emission data into an actual ecological footprint.

Thirdly, Rainer also announced the Siemens Industrial Edge Platform. This platform is extending the Industrial Edge concept of 2020 into a new Industrial Edge Marketplace, where partners together can have a platform to exchange and find collaborative value in providing greater solutions for industrial applications.

Visual from Siemens Digital Industries SPS Event November 2021

Established partners will now benefit from a more open marketplace platform approach to expand their solutions in collaboration with a growing comprehensive network.

Providing an Edge Ecosystem adds a different, more robust new marketplace for developers who see the benefits of collaborating and co-creating to build applications relevant to specific IIoT needs. The platform to develop interfaces in an open development environment attracts a broader, more diverse community of providers and developments, buyers, developers, and sellers.

The new transaction mechanism promises a select, buy and use software environment from an open App store to move towards a seamless service and further access the industrial automation market through automating technology and providing the industrial software.

The new offering makes it possible for B2B customers to purchase and operate multiple software components on an all-in-one platform.

Finally, the fourth announcement from the keynote was on new solution offerings that are “creating infinite opportunities from infinite data“. The focus has been on building customer solutions that improve productivity, provide greater flexibility, connectivity and the use of 5G and drive simulations.

Visual from Siemens Digital Industries SPS Event November 2021

To find out more, then watch the keynote and all the other presenters over the three days.

The event provides so much value within the Industrial world where automation and digitalization are combining increasingly.

Register here: sie.ag/3b1jZJH, and you can watch the event for some weeks to fit your schedule. Do go and view this SPS event site:  sie.ag/3b1jZJH . When you enter the Siemens virtual trade fair experience, you discover all highlights in a virtual 3D showroom, auditorium event program, and you can certainly watch the event for some weeks to come to fit your schedule.

You have missed out on contacting an expert directly in the event but reaching out to Siemens through their sales channels or supporting websites is easy to begin any specific discussion on solutions that enable this digitalization and automation of your journey.

I got so much from these sessions, the head is swimming, but the brain is swirling! Thank you for what this SPS event provided, sessions that delivered such high levels of understanding from all those involved.

Siemens does do these events well to offer both broad but highly focused solutions to the needs of their customer Continue reading →

Making the case for Ecosystem thinking

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Business is certainly changing

Credit Tatiana Plakhova @ complexitygraphics.com

Regretfully many businesses are still caught in the change over from the past industrial era, we have not fully absorbed or translated the impact of the digital effect. The rising expectations from technology are ‘running way ahead’ of our ability to transform the organizations to be digitally ready.

We are in need of finding and developing environments that are far more connected and open, simple yet intelligent to reduce complexity, yet fast and scalable as the frequency and collaboration needs are changing, all placing increased demands on the organization.

With the consistent onslaught of social media, the potential of cloud computing and the increasing reliance on the mobile or smartphone, the pressure is on organizations to adapt and respond accordingly. The consumer expectations are dramatically shifting to expecting these connected experiences we have written about, they are seeking higher levels of personal gratification.

Everything is about “getting connected”. Continue reading →

Thinking About Relationship and Network Management

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By looking outside we open up. More and more demands are being placed on us via our customers, suppliers, our regulators and a host of other stakeholders all wanting to contribute into our existing knowledge. The ability to collaborate, to cooperate is coming by purposefully designing ecosystems and platforms

We struggle to adapt to these new external pressures as the more we engage outside we realize there are (often) stark differences in approaching problems. This adaptation demands a very different approach to anyone organizations structures, processes and systems. They need to adapt to and support these changes in working within an ecosystem designed one.

We all need to be more flexible, adaptable and agile so our resources grow their capacity to absorb and strengthen the competency and capability in new more dynamic ways. To design in ecosystem thinking needs a very different approach.

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Designing Ecosystems in Health Understanding

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Understanding any health issue is complicated enough, in how a doctor works through the alternatives as a “pattern recognition” when someone sick seeks help.  The diagnostic process is a complex transition process that begins with the patient’s personal illness history to achieve a result that can be categorized so solutions can then be applied.

A patient consulting the doctor about his symptoms starts an intricate process that may label him, classify his illness, indicate certain specific treatments in preference to others, and put him in a prognostic category.

The outcome of the process is regarded as essential for effective treatment by both patient and doctor(1). It is seen as “the clustering of signs and their development over time is, in narrative theory, defined as the plot, with this plot, eventually becoming the diagnosis.

Taking health systems higher into whole health systems

When you take health systems higher, into a design of a whole health system, the complexity becomes a magnitude of order to sort out that is way up there, in a different league. We struggle to find ways to capture whole health systems, perhaps until now.

There are so many gaps in our health system, to the point we are often just plugging parts thinking they are improving the system.  Actually, the opposite is often true, we produce a ‘knock-on’ effect that depreciates the system to make it less effective progressively over time or in surprising sudden fashion. This progressive decline comes partly from not understanding the complete Health Ecosystem you are in. We need to think about designing Health Systems in Ecosystem ways.

It is argued our health systems are failing as they do not address the “whole” health ecosystem, as we only tend to treat part of the system. The doctor is looking to cure the immediate issue, applying solutions that are often grouped as generative but in his judgment applicable to your need.

The question we all face there are significant gaps as the system really is one-sided, it is looking for speedy outcomes, and to limit the cost. This is a solution-providers need but is it coving the patient’s side by delivering value in one that offers affective capacity. Affective here refers to the underlying affective experience of feeling, emotion, or mood, both in its physical and mental capacity to influence and produce lasting change but also to provide a better health system focused on outcomes that work for the system providers and the patients’ perspectives delivering value to both.

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Let’s Create and Rejuvenate with Ecosystems

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Credit Tatiana Plakhova @ complexitygraphics.com

Ecosystems are under-deployed or even misunderstood in business. Ecosystems are certainly growing in our jargon to describe something we think we want to achieve, but we fail to recognize many of its functioning aspects or needs to realize it. It is being offered simply as a buzzword.

The business ecosystem is an important business model you can deploy if you are having higher levels of complexity and growing uncertainty, and let’s be honest who doesn’t today? It can also be a way to reach out and have engagement and traction (Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, etc.)

When you are in the pursuit of having the best highly coordinated and geared to optimize performance such as a global supply chain, it is the complexity and integration that needs governance and the utmost attention to the detail and the flows. These are brilliant to “shave” costs, time and are working in predictable market conditions. Continue reading →