Value Designing

Collective intelligence for a thriving and enabling ecosystem

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I have been thinking more about “Collective Intelligence” recently, so as to build more thriving and enabling ecosystems. I would argue we do need to change the way we work, engage and participate in sharing what we know with others and then find the connecting mechanisms, to build from this collective engagement.

The future of work needs to be managed so differently than today’s designs. Although AI takes today’s headlines it is the collective use of human intelligence that will radically alter the way we eventually work.

Let me give you a little background first on what is triggering this.

For the past year, I have been privileged to be part of an external influencer community, centered on Siemens. Presently we have sixteen external influencers coming together about every three months with a range of Siemens people, internal experts in Cyber Security, Smart cities, digital transformation, communications, Artificial Intelligence and increasingly becoming engaged in conversations with Senior Management and Board members.

We are only scratching the surface of a very big organization but do have very exciting possibilities, if we continue to connect and are seen as valuable and worthwhile in exploring different ways of working and communicating. We do have the real potential to influence if this group becomes more embedded in aspects that can shape thinking.

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Digital transformation is our place of purgatory today.

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We are caught in a moment of time. All the hype, push, the argument for making the “digital transformation” is so badly stalled in many of our Corporations. We are running a marathon, mostly it seems fueled by “spent” energy and a growing sense of lowering our belief and confidence that we can finish this.

These digital transformations are like the deer, suddenly caught in the headlamp of a car that simply freezes, they seem immobilized, even for brief seconds, sometimes its reaction to flee is too late, it gets caught out by the oncoming car.

I feel many of our entities are caught in this moment of fear, bewilderment, rather paralyzed in how to tackle digital transformation. It is overwhelming. The advice available often does not help, it compounds that fear, they seem to be just staring at the size of the problem.

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The Ability to Scale and Collaborate in Platform Thinking.

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Credit Tatiana Plakhova @ complexitygraphics.co

For no specific reason, I went a little quiet on my posts on this site recently. There was not one reason, it felt that February just slipped by.

Actually, I can partly explain it as it was partly caught up in a project that took more time than I expected.

Also partly caught up in a lot of mixed feelings that held me back, so I got a little blocked in my thinking. You do have moments like that but you eventually work through them and “something” unblocks and things start to flow again.

Suddenly in the first few days of March, like Spring arriving, it was a very different burst of energy, well actually more insights, that have kicked off my month well.

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The IIoT digital solution platform market- late 2018 round-up of my observations.

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Do you know your platform solution?

Knowing your digital solutions is key to choose industrial platforms, as they might not meet your exact needs

What is under the hood of an Industrial Platform solution? What do you look for?

IIoT Platforms are still under significant construction

How do you judge the platforms that are out there?

Companies have this essential need to build an IoT platform today, or be at least very active partner in one, or even many, to fit their business goals. A platform connects, it connects your world with the rest of the world. Often when we talk about IIoT, it can get easily confused with IoT. Actually, IIoT, grew out of the other, IOT.

IoT is mostly about making the human interaction with the object(ives). IIoT is about connecting devices, sensors, building and improving manufacturing execution systems then applying intelligence and analytics to understand or improve the performance of the existing devices. The aim is to monitor, build parameters, sophisticated controls and search for solutions that will lessen the downtime and improve the productivity of the asset.

McKinsey estimates that the Industrial Internet of Things will create $7.5T in added-value by 2025. IIoT has been valued at around $255b as a market in 2025 (a past GE estimate). These two seem to offer very different estimates. In many ways, we are all confused and still guessing or predicting, because of so much uncertainty and not honestly knowing what comes next in technology invention that changes the position. We have learned, in our engagement and growing reliance just on the smartphone.

We have all learned to adapt and adopt so differently, as we connect more and more. In the IIoT world, there is predicted value across all of the connections (McKinsey view)  and as we see more solutions emerging, as ways to serve that “connected” need market growth will more than likely simply accelerate away. Speed, scale, scope are all accelerating away, and as companies, we need to find our positioning in this evolution and industrial internet. The 4th Industrial revolution is well-under way.

Let me provide a snapshot, my view, of where IIoT platforms-as-a-service sit today.

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How Open Is Open? Check it out.

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The broad use of ‘open’ does seem to have very different interpretations, especially when it comes to platforms or cloud-ready architecture.

Two examples for me in my research recently, needed some “airing” as the openness (excuse the pun) gives me a higher level of comfort. I wish others would state what openness really means in their offerings.

The two I have been drawn to are Aras and their open architecture platform for PLM and the other is Bosch with their IoT platform.

Let me take quotes from both to underpin that real clarity I believe the client would want before they go into a partnership. Today so much is banded about upon “lock-in” when you commit to platforms, it sort of scares of many potential clients wanting to have platform solutions, from making that investment. Trust and confidence in what you are actually signing up for, is needed to be fully transparent. Goes to say but is it?

In my view only having one platform provider is not the right path, it is a range of providers, selected because they can cater to your jobs and needs, not you having to fit into their architecture but it is this openness that significantly needs to be looked at closely.

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Defining Ecosystems in Industry

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Defining Ecosystems in Industry

In a recent exchange, actually, on twitter, we were discussing definitions of platforms for IoT or IIoT, defining ecosystems in industry. This was to shape a story to be told.

We got into the “how” to position them and in these exchanges, we eventually arrived at the question of Ecosystems, of “What defines ecosystems within an industry?”.

There is growing value in engaging in business ecosystems and let me offer the “why” and move you through the “what” towards the “how.” I felt it needed my “take” on defining Ecosystem design for Industry.

The present growing use of the word “ecosystem” has been born or borrowed (for industrial use) from ecology but it is not appreciating the understanding as well as it should do.

We in an industry do need to understand this, embrace it and interpret it in this ecological way, or design the Eco-friendly intent in a clear, game-changing way, that allows us to move forward at higher increased rates of change.

So the issue is what does make up an Ecosystem and make it stand apart and be valued for what it brings.

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A Statement of Ecosystem Intent Inside Our Business Enterprise- the CEO letter currently missing

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Ecosystems have become a really hot topic. As we gain the understanding of what a dual strategy approach to what our business could look like, you need to recognize what you still need control of, those you call your core assets. Yet at the same time, to explore and expand out more today we need to build better external collaborative approaches.

To achieve this reaching out and collaborating will require participating in platforms and building up your Ecosystem Management understanding.

The word “Ecosystem” is getting as much “air time” as the general use of the word “innovation” in business recently. It generates buzz, it projects the impression you are looking to the future, managing your business in that progressive, outward way, that shareholders and your employees love to here.

Well as we well only well know with innovation, if it does not align to strategy, integrate within the business activities, it stays a little out on one side. Also, innovation stays so often a necessity to “call upon” but not as your core focus of activity. That focus still is, sadly today focused on managing the assets for short-term performance, where the consistent focus is always on efficiency and effectiveness to “work or sweat those assets”. Maybe we might be seeing a change in ecosystem management design. More of the “assets” outsourced or in collaborative partnerships.

Well, Ecosystems are entering the lexicon of top management. It does sound good to talk about “building our ecosystem” in every possible way. You need to ask though, has management actually sat down and defined the type of ecosystem it wants to design, to participate in, or become part of. Or do this simply happen, a sort of drifting into, a grand experiment, as if that made real progressive sense? Let’s take a different approach

What if the CEO and the board decided to open up the discussion around the future pathway, one of managing within a federation of ecosystems.

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Biting off more than we can chew can be a good thing……depending.

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I had mentioned in a related post on my other posting site that I wanted to understand a recent Siemens event.

This was partly presenting 3rd financial quarter results but more on their future course with a Vision 2020+ and its respected parts being the design that is going to take the business out further by exploiting the parts within this vision.

There was a lot to take in on limited information and understanding. View the post “A feast of opportunities for Siemens?” for my first reactions on this.

The whole expansive story around Siemens new structure announced at this event offered some of the opening details, yet it is still to be “fleshed out” later in the year, by their management.

I specifically zoomed in on the new Digital Industries (DI) structure and where it is seemingly heading. Presently this new operating group will have 78,000 employees and a business revenue of around Euro 14 billion, that contributed a profit margin of around 16% in their fiscal 2017.

The expansion of the digitalization business has a very exciting acquisition announced the day before, with the Mendix acquisition, a leader, and pioneer in the area of low-code application development platforms, where you can potentially program and deploy apps up to ten times faster. This has been one of several “pain points” for Mindsphere, the Siemens digital platform, on providing a menu of apps to support client problems, so we should see some significant improvement on this point.

This purchase of Mendix can make a significant difference and propel the platform into a new value proposition, a 2nd generation digital platform where “smart” becomes central. I will be coming back to this once I have undertaken a little more research and assumption undertaking, in the next few days, as it has some compelling value positioning for Siemens, I believe.

It was the other part of the digitalization expansion that stopped me a little. This is what I want to discuss here. Let me work it through.

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Opening up our thinking towards ecosystems has a powerful effect

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ecosystems-abstract

Our whole understanding of innovation is changing, it is opening up to ecosystems and the necessary thinking and designing; there are numerous shifts occurring.

We are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into ones that are having a far more open stance. We are searching for more collaborative innovation (external orientation) combining external partners into more ‘collective thinking’.

This shift is offering us extra acceleration that is needed to improve our innovation performances from concept to market delivery.

Collaborative innovation is also leading us to higher chances of achieving greater impact and success, as nearly all novel ideas lay outside the organization’s domain of understanding.

As we increasingly include the customer and their needs within our understanding, these multiple collaborations and dialogues are building this better internal understanding.

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Platform Providers need to think more about Ecosystems Principles and Design

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In my opening post (here) I was thinking where platform providers seem to be, in their current value proposition. I cannot see their approaches as sustaining. Now, this is a personal opinion and observation but let me lay out an alternative view.

I believe we are at an inflection point where the design of IIoT platforms needs to be integrated into a new way of Ecosystem Design.

There is a real need for a more shared value, breaking through the old traditional boundaries of single companies working with ‘selected’ providers of service and highly selective platform providers.

Ecosystem design is about being open in all potentially valuable proposals and co-creation possibilities. It is using multiple platforms as being part of a very different future design. You go where the best collaborations can take place not get .locked into one.

We need to stop and start to think about Ecosystems and their design for platform providers. Platforms have been amazing in their design, recognition, and value in a very short time.

Platforms are changing the way we undertake business. We have passed through the early phase of their design. It is now time to bring platforms into their place within a greater Ecosystem design.

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