Category Archives: Value Designing

Evaluating Actual Business Ecosystems Using the Nine Dimension Diagnostic

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Applying the Diagnostic

I built the Nine Dimensions comparative diagnostic to evaluate the differences between organisations on their Ecosystem journey to gain both insights and potential gaps that might want to be filled, hopefully with my help.

Recently I undertook a set of focused evaluations on different Healthcare organizations- Novartis, Roche, Bayer, Royal Philips and Siemens Healthineers for understanding their present Ecosystem position.

My next step was to extend this diagnostic approach across into other sectors as well, in wanting to establish a more updated “universal” diagnostic tool. This post takes me into the Industrial sector and the e-commerce one

So,stepping out of the work achieved in the Heathcare sector I have actually re-tested* against a group of Industrial and e-commerce offering marketplaces connecting businesses and buyers worldwide. I chose Siemens AG, Schneider Electric, Salesforce and Alibaba.

*Why re-tested? In much earlier work on Ecosystem validations I used a different nine dimensions, more general-purpose instrument: it was good for establishing “does this company have ecosystem architecture at all,” weak for discriminating between companies that are all somewhere in the ecosystem-emerging middle or their own ecosystem understanding. It helped me learn and relate as I was building my IIBE blueprint

This revised Nine Dimension is a sharper, more comparative instrument because it was built (or refined) under the pressure of actually needing to differentiate real companies against each other, not designed in the abstract.

This was a test to run pulling current evidence on each company’s actual ecosystem/partner model. In this specific diagnostic I had expected a cleaner split between Siemens and Schneider and Salesforce and Alibaba as these two are regarded as more mature in their Ecosystem approaches

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Driving the future of Healthcare through an Ecosystem approach – Here’s a Plan

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A structured X-Ray from the IIBE

If You’re a Healthcare Diagnostics Company, Here’s What the IIBE Diagnostic Actually Means for You

You’re in a tough position:

  • You have strong diagnostic technology.
  • You face entrenched incumbents with distribution power.
  • You’re being shut out of established channels.
  • Building your own ecosystem feels expensive and slow.
  • Joining someone else’s ecosystem feels risky or unclear.
  • You’re unsure where the leverage actually is.

This is exactly the kind of situation the *IIBE Diagnostic is built for.

Let me show you how as someone who feels the pressure of entrenched competitors, rising costs, and the uncertainty of whether to build, join, or partner into an ecosystem. I’ll answer in a way that is clear, strategic, and grounded in the IIBE architecture

*IIBE stands for Intelligent Integrated Business Ecosystem – the architectural approach to Ecosystems.

1. The Diagnostic Gives You a Structural X‑Ray of Your Strategic Position

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Treating Ecosystems as a new asset class

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Appreciating Assets as a new Ecosystem accounting class

Current accounting fails ecosystems. Traditional accounting assumes assets wear out, value declines with use and treats relationships as expense, knowledge is seen as overheads, coordination is a cost and trust is intangible and is left untracked.

Ecosystem assets are the capital class that becomes more valuable every time it is used. Investing in them is not a cost – it is the foundation of compounding advantage. In some ways applying this logic offers a real breakthrough, it reframes the entire investment conversation in ecosystems – and you can turn compounding from a metaphor into a management system.

It is time for us to consider treating Ecosystem assets as an appreciating capital asset class – because they grow stronger through use – and our accounting must shift from measuring cost/return to measuring what is being built and how fast it appreciates.

*** Depreciation logic was built for assets to die.

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Underestimating what ecosystems really need

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Underestimating what Ecosystems really need

Most companies still underestimate what “ecosystem” really means and why they need to go deeper into the causes of their Ecosystems not delivering what they would want. .

They think it’s a partner program. Or a platform. Or a digital initiative. Or a slide with circles and arrows.

But here’s the shift that’s already happening — quietly, structurally, and faster than most leaders realise:

Your business is no longer operating in a market. It’s operating in an ecosystem.

And that changes everything.

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The Compound Value and Growth Logic Of Business Ecosystems

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Recognising We Have A Problem with ‘Scale’

What scale logic assumes

Scale logic rests on a clear set of assumptions: inputs are replicable, processes are stable, and growth comes from doing more of a proven thing with greater efficiency. These assumptions are well-suited to manufacturing, standardised service delivery, and transactional platforms with high volume and low variance. They have produced enormous value in those contexts.

But they embed a hidden constraint: the system produces more output without necessarily becoming more capable. A scaled organisation is a bigger version of itself. It is not a structurally different one. The growth is additive. The returns are, at best, linear — and increasingly sub-linear as competitive imitation narrows differentiation and regulatory, environmental, and labour costs compress margins.

Where scale logic fails ecosystems

Ecosystems are not linear value chains with more participants. They are systems in which the primary assets — relationships, knowledge, trust, combinatorial capability — behave differently from physical or transactional assets. They appreciate through use. They generate network effects. They produce emergent value that no single participant designed or controls.

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Siemens is succeeding. That is exactly when governance gets dangerous.

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Recognizing the growing reality

The hardest ceilings are the ones you approach while everything around you still looks like progress.

Siemens has built something real. Real industrial reach. Real data gravity. Real presence across manufacturing, energy, mobility and healthcare. The most credible industrial ecosystem of its generation – built over decades, not months, on relationships and infrastructure that competitors cannot simply replicate.

And yet.

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Diagnostic Suite of The IIBE Ecosystem – What they are and how they work?

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The IIBE Diagnostic Suite is for all those that see Ecosystems as essential for their future

Structural clarity for businesses navigating ecosystem change come from having available and by offering, the process, the tools, the engagement that brings this altogether into a powerful solution

Irrespective of if you are already involved in Ecosystem management within your business IIBE has solutions that support you

Already feeling you are an Ecosystem leader? – Do you already fear a risk of disruption or drift. Are you questioning how they must evolve without destabilizing what you have built.? There are many options for Established players. Strengthen your ecosystem position by confronting disruption, rethinking orchestration, and future-proofing your business model before the ecosystem moves on without you.

Disruptors & Emerging Challengers– those looking to be far more Agile in their innovating and second-movers looking to scale within or against dominant ecosystems. The need and emphasis is to scale your ecosystem strategy with structure and foresight — without losing the agility and edge that makes you a disruptor and focus on those you know you can disrupt for building a new market offering.”

Thirdly, if you are within the Nascent / Laggards / Emerging Catalysts of Organizations just entering the ecosystem space, often through necessity or external change pressure or recognizing the extended value of collaborations and co-creations. Bridge into ecosystem thinking with confidence — gain clarity, build the right partnerships, and leapfrog complexity through focused, actionable tools.No worries we have you covered.

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How the IIBE Delivers Measurable ROI Across Three Client Groups

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Business leaders acknowledge that ecosystems are now critical to growth, innovation, and resilience, far fewer can answer a harder question:“What is the return on our ecosystem investments — and how do we know?”

The IIBE Delivers Measurable ROI Across Three different Client Groups Making Them Investable in returns and gains to advance your Ecosystem thinking.

The challenge is not a lack of activity. It is a lack of measurable clarity. Ecosystems are often positioned as strategic necessities but managed as experimental side initiatives, with limited visibility into value creation, decision confidence, or time-to-impact.

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Why the IIBE Matters for Each Client Group we focus upon for Ecosystem Value

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In today’s business environment, it has been suggested that more than 70 % of leaders struggle with ecosystem planning, understanding, or extracting value. Many initiatives stagnate in fragmentation, misaligned purpose or slow value pathways — because ecosystems are still treated as buzzwords rather than operating systems for adaptive competitive advantage.

The Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE) is uniquely positioned to solve this exact problem: to help organisations diagnose their ecosystem health, implement structured pathways, and extract new value from their collaborative networks in practical, measurable ways.

Below is how each of our three principal client groups — Mature Ecosystem Leaders, Disruptors & Emerging Challengers, and Nascent/Laggards/Emerging Catalysts — we are suggesting how they should recognise the problem, what they need to value the most, and how a dedicated IIBE offering gives them confidence, coherence, and competitive edge.

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A recommended client entry point within the IIBE for Business Ecosystem Building- Ecosystem Exposure

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A client entry point recommended within the IIBE Offerings

Within my commercial model for client offerings, provided for Ecosystem building, thinking and design, the value of exploring Tier One as an initial low-cost investment is a great place to start. This extends the understanding of what lies under the IIBE hood, that fires and delivers your Ecosystem ambitions.

It provides some critical insights into how you could position your business for obtaining a competitive advantage at very low investments. You gain a highly valuable return for discovery, understanding and positioning of your Ecosystem.

Firstly Explaining The Overarching Commercial Logic

The IIBE commercial model is built as a progressive pathway, allowing clients to enter at different points depending on maturity, ambition, and urgency. All offerings align to four principles:
(1) Low-friction entry points
(2) Capability-building progression
(3) Implementation support
(4) Ongoing advisory and intelligence renewal

Every module is independent but connects into a broader arc of ecosystem capability formation.

My recommended starting point is:

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