Business Ecosystems are interconnected and integrated networks to build unique value and greater resilience
Ecosystems are living adaptive networks: these forms the basis of the integrated Business Ecosystems where Connection, Dynamism, and Evolution Converge.
Central to my thinking in my Business Ecosystem offering is a core concept of multi-dimensional applications that combine the different ecosystem types (Innovation, Entrepreneurial or Start-Up, Business, Dynamic, (solo) Enterprise and Enterprise-to-Enterprise) as interconnected layers with the different dimensions (or building blocks) to explore around Purpose, Relationship, Value Creation, Governance and Enabling Technology. This provides a comprehensive, rigorous way to analyze and build ecosystems.
But firstly in this post let me tell the Integrated Business Value Story.
Managing for the signs of risk and failure within Business Ecosystems
Recognizing the telling signs of failure or those necessary moments of timely intervention are critical for the continuous building of a successful Business Ecosystem.
Failures happen, recognizing the early warning signals becomes important. I am outlining here a more simplified guide. The more extensive one contact me and we can discuss it and build from this.
As an Introduction
Business ecosystems are becoming essential for success in today’s interconnected world. However, these complex systems carry inherent risks, and failures can be costly, embarrassing but more importantly undermine your organizations position.
This guide provides a structured approach to understanding, preventing, and mitigating ecosystem failures, to enable the empowering of leaders to recognize different mitigating risk and warning signs and then build a greater resilience into thriving ecosystem initiatives.
A structured approach to ecosystem failure analysis could be highly valuable to recognize and avoid with a deeper appreciation for ecosystem health and risk management.
The relationship between emerging technologies and business ecosystems is not a simple one-way street. It’s a highly interactive and co-evolutionary relationship where each influences and reshapes the other.
I wanted to take this one stage further to break out these emerging technologies to related them more specifically to their influence on Ecosystems. Arguably it is increasingly a critical intersection.
Interconnected Business Ecosystems- the imperative in a modern world
Background and Introduction
I enjoy the value of building different thoughts through Mind Mapping. They trigger as well as pull together different strands. In a world that seems to be facing a new world order in trade, collaboration and cooperation, we need building mechanisms that can adapt and give a better resilience in “selective” networks. For me, building and designing Business Ecosystems offers a different way of enabling growth, different value and worth.
So let me tell you the story of Business Ecosystems in a modern world
In today’s rapidly evolving world, the concept of ecosystems has emerged as a critical model for achieving sustainable growth and addressing complex challenges. Ecosystems, in this context, refer to networks of interconnected entities—whether they be businesses, communities, or technologies—working collaboratively to create value and drive innovation.
The imperative of ecosystems is becoming increasingly evident as we navigate a more interconnected world, where working together isn’t just beneficial, but essential.
Building a new Interconnected Business Ecosystem Design
I have recently been reworking my views on Business Ecosystems in their thinking and design. They are recognizing a fundamental shift in how we approach problem-solving and value creation. We need to continue to urge businesses to move away from often isolated, linear models towards this thinking and design, forming around being interconnected, based on dynamic systems.
It is moving towards a collaborative, interconnected design that makes for a radically different mindset where complex relationships, where value co-creation and balancing both short-term and long-term become central for sustainability and protecting a viable future.
We do need to recognize Business is on a Burning Platform: Why Traditional Approaches Are Failing
I do, it seems, work a lot on integrating systems. So much of this work is specifically focused on advancing innovation in processes, design, and flows through applying Ecosystem thinking and design. So much of what we discover seems to always fall between gaps in how we organize this into a cohesive whole getting to a commercial conclusion.
There are many reasons, for example, it could be in the handover from one person to another or team to team, it could be the ignoring of aspects that seemed unimportant earlier on, ignored as a concept progresses and completely forgotten at the final stages, yet this insight or nugget of information held the key to unlocking a discovery moment. We seem bad at integrating our thinking or processes, hence my constant “quest” to find ways to bring things together for integrated thinking and designs.
This is why I focus on Ecosystems in thinking and design. The other day I picked up on something in my research I felt was important within Business Ecosystems thinking. It took a while to put this into the understanding that “really” seems to talk to me and I hope you
The need is to recognize that Business Ecosystems do need to be distinctive to succeed. They are complex and challenge much of what and how we undergo Business today.
Business Ecosystems do matter. Briefly they can transform the linear value chains we have in place today and make them more dynamic value networks. By expanding beyond existing and our traditional borders and markets we can create those potentially exponential growth opportunities. We can provide enhanced and highly interconnected customer value and through the selection of partners within the Ecosystem network we can can build real, sustaining competitive advantage.
Business Ecosystems can unlock game-changing potential
We sometimes get sidetracked, caught up in the “weeds” of making step-by-step progress, seemingly against odds that are often resistant and unyielding to the notion of change or alternatives to what we are doing.
Today many businesses are floundering in low or no-growth environments and applying approaches that just are not equipped to deal with today’s complex challenges. We are facing market conditions caught up in volatility and ongoing disruptions.
We are equally in the age of harnessing collective intelligence to be in a better position to address these complex challenges. The combined power of Gen AI, humans and diversity of understanding need to be harnessed to open up entirely new realms of possibility. Enter the power of Business Ecosystems.
The Yin and Yang of Business- opportunity and risk. Image Adobe
Are we seeing increasing complexity within the business world? The search for growth is having real impact from changing political realities, regulatory and market conditions. We are in a fractured and polarized world at present and we all have to adapt and change how we go about our business. There is more uncertainty and you judge this as either risk or opportunity. There is a strategic imperative to “open up” to alternatives to how you undertake business or accelerate it.
For me risk or opportunity are the same side of the coin, you can’t gain one without a level of the other playing its part. A business “yin and yang”, the opposite but interconnected and often complementary forces to drive our business forward by applying business ecosystem thinking and design opens up new competitive forces to build into your strategic thinking.
Is the level of “fear” seemingly rising and are our business organizations equipped or not, to draw upon the many alternatives that technology, Gen AI, platforms, networks, collaboration and co-creation opportunities that are offered to manage and rethink new opportunity and risk?
Building the Ecosystem Business model is a paradigm shift
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
