We are forming in many different ways our greater collection of relationships that matter to each organization, by connecting increasingly in a network of potential partners and collaborators.

The goals are so as to deliver innovative products and services that would not be able to be delivered by only having just the one organization attempting it.

Managing this growing form of innovation complexity is challenging old theories, boundaries, organizations and how they exist going forward.

Ecosystem innovation is more today about managing beyond the immediate known’s found within one organization’s limited focus of the world, they are exploring many of the unknowns that need discovery and then connection.

The organization that envisages a changing world needs to often organize around ecosystems to seek and influence the broader effects of where they presently compete to bring about some kind of more substantial advantage or respond to survive.

Often this involves thinking through decisions of where to go or what to build. This includes the designing the architecture, platforms, construct new standards and be equipped to attract and integrate different members of a community, who have something relevant to contribute to forming these ecosystems.

Opening up our thinking toward ecosystems has a powerful effect

As we begin to open up our thinking to ecosystems these are having a powerful effect on our perspectives, as different partners contribute to this often ‘emergent’ thinking. This becomes more evolutionary and requires a completely different way to manage these ‘relationship contracts that are forming around a given concept or platform.

Ecosystem designs require increased interactions within the community and need far more tightly controlled activities to gain the synergies and effects from working within an ecosystem.

Relationship management needs to keep focusing on enhancing, driving innovation and knowing how to adapt this to the whole concept. No easy task.

Ecosystems that produce ultimately new business models often rest on a large capacity for agility within the participating organizations. Internal capabilities and competencies often get highly stretched by the new dynamics taking place, you need a strong orchestrator of the ecosystem to manage these challenges and many cultural biases that can blind a ‘line of sight’.

Aligning partners on a platform needs-basis is very different from aligning them to just one organization’s needs. In the past, we adapted to meet that specific requirement of that one dominant organization as they controlled the process.

Today you can argue differently, why what you see as needed is not often the best solution and maybe needs really pushing out the boundaries of possibilities, making it clearly different from that first envisaged.

Innovation is becoming more evolutionary but demands more change and disruption both internally to manage it as well as how it is delivered to the end beneficiary. It allows for more breakthrough innovation, greater challenging of the existing status quo and often takes organizations out of their existing comfort zones.

Of critical importance is nurturing the health of the ecosystem.

There are three fundamental aspects that need to be considered

1. The value to each within the ecosystem. These values may be different but it is the recognition that the platform provided is the best possible way to deliver their individual part of the solution.
2. A critical mass of the parties within the ecosystem gives it that certain robustness. The combined effects in the ecosystem are greater than the efforts and sum of individual effects.
3. The successful ability to seek continuous performance and improvement by the way each learns. This equally achieves improved benefits and collaboration effects, so as to give the continuous upward push towards delivering a new innovation concept. This co-evolution or joint learning can lead to optimization effects, increased relevance and generating synergies unlikely without some creative friction along the way.

Ecosystems are evolutionary and do have ‘normal’ life cycles

For the health of the innovating ecosystem, you need to go through four stages

1. Birth– the buying into the initial concept, the pioneering and focus on the critical acquisition of key partners, market understanding iterations and the founding principles and roles each party is required to play and contribute
2. Expansion– as the ecosystem knowledge and activities expand you will need to have scale and scope built into the system. Standards need to be actively worked out, platforms established and robust, dedicated resources enabling and coordinating activity
3. Leading & Evolving– This could be possibly the ‘red queen effect’ that drives the evolution but you do need clear roles, that include network orchestrators and more than likely one dominant partner who manages the ecosystem. Each party needs to ensure bargaining techniques, resolution management and an amazing set of skills not to throw something out that might have hidden value. One party needs to ‘mind the (open) commons and manage the IP across the ecosystem not to allow it to stop the collaboration. This type of leadership is going to be a rare, valued set of skill sets.
4. Self-renewal – it is the ability to deliver on the ideas otherwise the value of contributing to the ecosystem has no value. The ability to understand the potential for delivery is critical in any assessment as non-renewable ecosystems will not lead to the ongoing evolution and may have a very specific or limited advantage. Where ecosystems seem to work is where the goal usually has to be for a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) that delivers clear differentiation and increases revenues multiple folds.

You must match your organization’s ability and access the fit within any innovation ecosystem.

Operating within an innovation ecosystem requires considerable evaluation. Does the synthesis of your new offering by working within the ecosystem ‘federation’ of interested parties combine with other organizations that are more likely to create a coherent customer solution that is more than likely going to disrupt the existing market?

Can you afford to participate or go it alone? Collaborations that have increased levels of complexity have often higher risks by managing within ecosystems.

You have to really assess that all the partners can deliver their parts and usually this is a complete unknown so you have to work through a set of tough strategic questions to get closer to the knowns. These would include but are not limited to:

1. How does your offering measure up as critical/ attractive within an ecosystem federation that will add value?
2. Knowing where you fit within the value chain. Do you have dependencies on others, can each satisfy their commitments on time, what resolutions/ warning system needs to be in place and get a clear understanding of the risk of failure by others within the ecosystem.
3. The higher the evolution for the final customer, the higher the delay in adoption as a risk so you have to be clear on the ‘returns’ and estimated timing to manage your expectations.
4. The more partners within the ecosystem the more complexity and risk. The dominant party needs to provide some compelling arguments on vision, potential effects, and understanding of the changes caused by competitive dynamics in any invite.
5. Answer the basic questions of when, why, how, and where can we compete within any federation of parties. You need to pace your resources to match the process (see below)
6. Maybe you can reduce your involvement (and risk exposure) by becoming a sub-eco-system provider to support others within the platform.

Just remember this as a summing up.

In ecosystems, this remains a key insight that would certainly apply: “The dynamics of the system will be dominated by the slow components, with the rapid components simply following along.” “Slow constrains quick, slow controls quick”. 

Managing ecosystems is hard, it is an adaptive system and requires dedicated focus and constant attention to just keep it dynamic, it needs constant engagement and moving along, it needs nurturing.

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