Industrial Ecosystems | Your Ecosystem Design Hub

Gaining speed, perspective, inspiration and agility the Schneider Electric way

July 5, 2021February 9, 2018 by @paul4innovating

I just wish I had reviewed these guys a lot sooner. Schneider Electric has been on my radar for reviewing their platform for some time.

Schneider is in among the leaders in the digital transformation of Energy Management and Automation of homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and a range of industries.

They hold a commanding position in Power Management in Medium and Low voltage, Secure power, in critical power and cooling, grid automation, industrial and building automation and controls and providing discrete automation process systems.

Schneider Electric has been constantly providing integrated efficiency solutions for many years, well before platforms became fashionable.

They are constantly seeking to combine energy, automation, and software. They have adopted a very open ecosystem approach collaborating with partners, integrators and the developer community to build an open platform to deliver real-time control and operational efficiency

Schneider Electric is not set up as a glamorous company, they provide the essentials; such as boxes, enclosures, protect relays, cabling, control, switchgear, metering, racks, breaker switches. The list goes on and on. They operate in 100 countries and set out to find the most efficient and agile ways to foster innovation.

I get the real impression they have taken innovation to the core of what they do and I often can’t say that for many companies I review – more’s the pity.

Mapping our Innovation Future through Ecosystems and Platform Design

May 8, 2022January 29, 2018 by @paul4innovating

Why do we need a new innovative architecture, for mapping out the future

We are witnessing a very radical change, driven by technology, increasingly disrupting and breaking down the past traditional boundaries and market positions of many incumbent organizations. Mostly these were built so as to defend positions to achieve and maintain economic scale.

There is a new economic logic to building even greater scale through technology design, it involves greater complexity, yet its value proposition is to strive toward offering greater customer experience and satisfaction.

The solutions are valued far higher, in social and economic value. We need to recognize this is a new business model design with the arrival of engagement platforms that connect all the ecosystem of partners in its design, to gain this scale and value.

A new economic logic that gets closer to the connected customer expectations and daily needs for innovative solutions to solve, in ways far better than what are being presently being offered. Connecting technology, digital and human understanding brings radically different solutions.

A different innovative design has become paramount to these new offerings, so they can be capitalized upon, releasing this increased value creation understanding of opportunities.

The market dynamics are also changing; we are seeing greater disruption and blurring of traditional boundaries of competition, yet the reality is that innovation systems, structures and processes are badly lagging, in design and approach, to react and respond to this new dynamic.

A dynamic where the startup can undermind the established incumbent, mostly large organizations that are less nimble and agile, in radically different and dramatic ways, in short time frames, from the pilot, and testing to scaling those solutions, moving them from local to global through the power of technology applications.

The Emerging World of Connected Industrial Ecosystems

May 8, 2022January 10, 2018 by @paul4innovating

Whenever I seem to read about Platforms and Ecosystems, it mostly seems to relate to technology-led organizations and how they continue to connect us all up in our private lives.

As leading examples of the disruption that occurs and the connected value, we get offered the likes of Uber, Facebook, Apple, etc., all bringing new value to transform our world.

Yet, for me, the area that is shifting dramatically is where Industrial organizations are providing platform solutions to solve industrial problems. Good examples are Bosch, Siemens, GE and Schneider Electrics.

They transform their solutions and clients businesses by offering digital on top of the existing products in some awe-inspiring ways. They focus on connecting up their solutions into their client network on platforms to build the industrial internet.

The building of these platforms has prioritised specific industries to master and progressively transform their business into a digitally connected one. This seems to me to be so much harder than those like Facebook, Google or Uber.

Industrial solutions have had to deal with legacy “big time,” overcome entrenched positions or views and begin to collaborate in highly sophisticated ways, with often very demanding and sometimes sceptical clients.