Regretfully many businesses are still caught in the change over from the past industrial era, we have not fully absorbed or translated the impact of the digital effect. The rising expectations from technology are ‘running way ahead’ of our ability to transform the organizations to be digitally ready.

We are in need of finding and developing environments that are far more connected and open, simple yet intelligent to reduce complexity, yet fast and scalable as the frequency and collaboration needs are changing, all placing increased demands on the organization.

With the consistent onslaught of social media, the potential of cloud computing and the increasing reliance on the mobile or smartphone, the pressure is on organizations to adapt and respond accordingly. The consumer expectations are dramatically shifting to expecting these connected experiences we have written about, they are seeking higher levels of personal gratification.

Everything is about “getting connected”.

Working in Ecosystems will change the nature of business activities

Ecosystems will have the potential to expand capabilities and enable experiences beyond anything possible today in the present ‘disconnected’ world, where technology is not playing a significant part. It is by the very nature of the interacting and interdependence in relationships that is driving this need of participating in an interconnected system.

We are all increasingly searching for designing new ways to do business, ones that are buildimng networks that are collectively finding, exchanging and looking to create and allocate new business value together. It is the need of acting together, that offers the potential for the outcomes to be greater than the sum of the individual parts and it will be technology driven.

Recognizing the significant changes underway let’s look at many parts of today’s environment that are coming together to make the conditions for a ‘perfect storm’ that we have to navigate through.

Multiple elements are combining to drive change and get us all to consider Ecosystem designs as a solution to reduce complexity.

• Business has a growing need for finding new competitive battle zones as they exhaust the traditional ones
• There are these higher risks of disruption happening today, across all industry sectors
• The scramble to scale and globalize is increasing the pressure for speed, adaptation, and new outlooks.
• Customers are more sophisticated and demanding, expectations and empowerment are on the rise.
• Customer experience is becoming more compelling, individualized and offering integrated experiences.
• Digital transformation, big data analysis and the ubiquity of information is changing the knowledge game
• Industry lines and conventions are blurring and merging through the need for technology and overhaul
• Power is shifting from single company offerings into platform offerings, built on collaboration needs
• The existing Business Model is increasingly under threat and shorter in its ‘shelf life’
• Collaborative Needs are increasingly the basis for achieving competitive advantage
• Reality is that every innovation and company is part of a broader, evolving ecosystem
• Our futures are far more intertwined and dependent on others
• Technology is leading us all in an unparalleled rate of change in most of what we do in our lives.
• The reinventing of the rules of competition have dramatically opened up (startups, venture capital etc)
• We all cannot navigate the future alone, we are becoming increasingly reliant and dependent.
• Technology offers business greater access to intelligence that is fast and scalable
• There is a shift in the economic equation to collaboration, transparency and customer engagement.

These shifts are altering the business environment and organizations have got to find solutions to address these, as these shifts are increasingly making the environment highly complex to navigate through. Ecosystem thinking holds a crucial key to managing this growing complexity, in radically connected ways.

Business Ecosystems are not new but they hold tremendous promise for innovation

Business Ecosystem thinking, although not new, is rapidly becoming the new organism to coalesce around to tackle growing complex challenges and a more demanding consumer. It has the mechanisms to encompass all necessary players to share and relate to the challenges and collectively work on solutions together, often in a growing world of complexity.

The post Making the case for Ecosystem thinking first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

We increasingly use the word “ecosystem” to describe our environment that we operate with, but we are often diluting its true positioning.

Truly unique ecosystems are hard to find and certainly to manage. One I really feel reflects a collaborative model worth explaining is the ones that are forming around Hydrogen as the alternative energy vector based on renewables. To replace or become a significant part of any entrenched energy system requires a system design approach. This part of the energy transition fits within the ‘greater’ energy system design.

Let’s look at this with some context and then clarify that approaching Hydrogen needs a unique Ecosystem design. We are presently building a unique ‘nested’ Hydrogen Ecosystem within the Energy Transition. It is interesting to explore, firstly here and then in a follow-up post on one of its specific parts. Firstly the big picture needs us to radically change our energy sources due to global warming.

To tackle full decarbonization is one of the world’s most significant challenges over the next 30 years. The historical Paris Agreement or known in French: L’accord de Paris, is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance, signed in 2016.

One hundred ninety-five countries signed the accord to address climate change that requires deeper emissions reduction commitments from all countries—developed and developing.  It brings us much closer to a safer climate trajectory and creates an ambitious path forward for decades to come. The agreement includes commitments from all major emitting countries to cut their climate-altering pollution and to strengthen those commitments over time.

The energy transition is to re-design around a global energy system built on clean energy.

A really unique part of any energy transformation is how complex this really is. The transformation requires a massive overhaul to reduce our carbon emissions and put in place radical solutions on how we generate, distribute, store, and consumer energy. Our present dependence on fossil fuels needs us to drive exponential growth in renewable energy, such as wind, solar, and water use.

Today we are pushing for a carbon-neutral economy as fast as we can. We require wind and solar replacing coal, oil, and gas. Yet this only goes part of the way within the energy system. Delivery clean sources of electricity are well on the road to a sustainable and growing future, increasingly cost-competitive to eliminate large sectors based on coal, oil, and to some degree, natural gas. The hard one to crack is changing the gases we rely upon and currently use.

We need to find a climate-friendly energy source that overcomes those current end-use sectors that are hard to electrify as they need to require high-intensity heat levels than coal and natural gas provides. These high-grade industry heat sectors, known as hard-to-abate, such as steel and chemicals, some heavy transport, aviation, shipping, agriculture, and industrial feedstocks, need to place a clean energy carrier.

Enter Hydrogen, reinvigorated and repurposed based on Renewables and new Technology designs

Presently Hydrogen is the only feasible route for at-scale decarbonization. It is a highly versatile, clean, and flexible energy vector. Many have evaluated the potential of the hydrogen sector by sector that ramping up Hydrogen is needed to achieve any energy transition in an efficient and economically attractive way.

The problem today is that Hydrogen is simply not (yet) fit for large-scale deployment. Hydrogen’s accepted wisdom is a perfect solution as a clean energy carrier, feedstock, and fuel. It can facilitate the extensive scale integration of renewables through conversion from H2O to pure Hydrogen (H2). The potential to store Hydrogen as renewable Hydrogen can decarbonize the gas grid and can progressively convert incumbent natural gas and coal to this needed low-carbon through a gas reformation with carbon capture, utilization, and storage solutions (CCUS). It can tackle transport, heating, and cooling in the present energy-intensive industries and is relatively compatible with end-users and offering convenience in replacing the existing end-user application.

Hydrogen has been around for years.

It is part of the industrial process today. Today there is a hydrogen market well established, currently estimated at US$135b per year, growing 6 to 8% annually. It is 95% based on fossil fuel extraction due to the intensity of heat required. It is used in the hard-to-abate sectors of chemical refining, iron and steel production, and high-temperature heat applications, including melting, gasifying, drying and mobilizing a wide array of chemical reactions.  Natural gas is the primary source of hydrogen today, then coal, then oil. In processes through steam, methane reforming is for producing ammonia and methanol. It is within industries where CO2 is emitted in the atmosphere, although carbon capture for such products as urea fertilizer does happen. Many Industries today know a lot about hydrogen properties and have been “handling” them for decades. The challenge needs to change reliance on fossil fuels alongside hydrogen into processes where hydrogen is produced for clean energy or renewables.

The push today and in the future is Hydrogen will be based on clean energy sources, renewables.

Today predictions suggest an ambitious scenario for hydrogen deployment that Hydrogen could provide up to 24% of total energy demand alone by 2050 (BNEF analysis) and a similar share in one recent estimate provided by Hydrogen Europe for Europe.  The challenge is to balance the seeking of low-carbon electricity through fossil fuels with carbon capture, utilization, and storage with replacing it with green Hydrogen, all generated by renewables. The essential need is to achieve in any replacement of existing fuels or process a minimize disruption and replacement, the same or better return, or provide a compelling logic to make the necessary change such as a clear need to switch to clean energy for competitive or societal pressures.

Today Hydrogen solutions are going through varying levels of proof of concept.

Delivery beyond a promise that Hydrogen-based solutions are the viable replacement, there needs to be a massive ramping out in Hydrogen solutions’ scope, impact, and scale. These solutions need to keep pushing compelling business cases for gaining industrial commitments to clear energy-friendly alternatives, and this means to get there, there is required significant cost reduction in “all things Hydrogen.” to bring this into realization. Today this is the intent but not the reality.

The ability to scale is exciting in the next two or so decades.

The Ecosystem for Hydrogen needs to offer vision, substance, and all the necessary connected parts.

To undertake such a change from fossil fuels to renewable clean energy needs real organization; it needs a new system to come into play. Each sector cannot leverage something as radical as changing our energy system; it requires global collaboration. To leverage Hydrogen, we need a highly collaborative world based on an Ecosystem design set of principles.

The conditions of the change are driven by the Paris Agreement, signed in 2016 to reduce our greenhouse gases to reverse the global warming effect. To do this, we need climate-friendly solutions that reduce all the greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3).

To tackle something as significant as replacing an established energy system with another across all its parts of the value chain is daunting and incredibly complicated.

Complexity needs intense coordination.

To imagine how complex this change to delivering a shift of this magnitude away from fossil dependence into the Hydrogen economy in such an ambitious time scale of thirty years needs an exceptional design to give the Paris Agreement a chance to achieve its goals.

Can you imagine a Hydrogen Ecosystem being created and organized that needs to influence and shape national strategies for energy, provide education and understandings, suggest and provide regulations, standardization, infrastructure, and incentive suggestions?

Shifting the Energy System to Scaling Hydrogen

A shift to a critical energy vector is undoubtedly no easy task in a short period of giving the required momentum over the next 10 to 20 years. This current decade is designated “the H2 decade” to provide Hydrogen with the momentum, the pathway to scaling, and the focus it needs, so it can be an irreversible suggested force by 2030 to gain global recognition and adoption.

To build momentum in any evolution, you need forces that are pushing in the same direction. The ecosystem design lends itself to a structure that provides the environment for a collective response. Any dynamic environment needs to recognize its parts. Ecosystems need to be orchestrated and implemented in staged, evolutionary ways. Concepts and solutions need to be promoted, debated, and then tested, validated, where eventual winners are determined (Darwin’s evolutionary theory applies).  The proposed solutions need to have clear business case validation for making the change, validated in many diverse situations, so the scale and delivery is based on the promise made.

By forming an Ecosystem approach, in the partnerships needed, previous structures formed and built out over a hundred years or so can only succeed in having both the incumbent and disruptors working within the same Ecosystem.

This level of collaboration requires something special; it needs collaboration, trust, and shared belief.

An ecosystem to function requires all of its essential parts to function and be an active part, be these regulators, industry, and investors to build, relate, and invest in this ambitious concept. They all need to come together on a mutual understanding platform, shared commitment but recognizing each has a part to play, its special, specific, often unique part. The “combination effect” enables an ecosystem to feed off and rely on all within it, to give it a vibrancy and sustaining value to keep driving towards a goal that all those involved constantly keeps in their mind.

To deliver hydrogen and all the expectations requires a dedicated approach; it needs building in steps. It needs to adapt and adjust, but like any ecosystem, it needs adaptation to build resilience and show sustainability.

The post Creating A Unique Nested Hydrogen Ecosystem for the Energy Transformation first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

Powerful networked ecosystem

We are entering the world of innovation ecosystems where broader, more complex innovation challenges, through greater collaborations can be achieved.

So to help, there is a dedicated site to building the arguments and exploring options for your future here in collaborative designs and you have found it!

Collaborative Ecosystems are forging a new direction and momentum for innovation to travel and tackle more demanding innovation that requires the capabilities of more than one to deliver what is becoming increasingly possible through technology and the network effect we see through our growing connections.

For many today, innovation is simply not working, it remains a disappointment for a variety of reasons, especially for those leading organizations required to be seeking out new growth, operating in increasingly volatile and tough markets where disruption and copying are increasing the pressures. Something has to change and it is this recognition that it can come from managing innovation in ecosystems that can provide part of the answer.

We believe innovation needs to enter a new era of prosperity.

Incremental innovation can only take you a very limited way, it needs a bolder resolution as we must move from the era of discreet products, There is a need to deliver some changes in the way we operate, collaborate and create. Perhaps this is even more radical than we initially would like but this needs a different set of thinking and growing understanding and here, we aim to provide part of this.

We are finding ourselves in a race to the bottom when it comes to maintaining a competitive edge. As soon as the product is available within ever-decreasing time, it is being copied and any advantage has vanished. Can we continue to chase our tail?

We require a different way of thinking. This is more centred on innovation ecosystems.

So on this site; it will be dedicated to telling the innovation stories that provide an understanding of the value and growth opportunities that can come from exploring innovation ecosystems.

These will include what makes up innovation ecosystems and the changes this can offer. How the platforms we see everywhere can fit and work for us.

We all need to explore ecosystems, understand the delivery mechanisms of platforms along with other collaborative methods and push towards the new need of today, to deliver a seamless total solution that provides customers what they are constantly asking for, to solve their needs and give them greater engagement and experiences. This thinking is driven by a need for new products and services and experiences, otherwise, we believe customers will continue to turn away from discrete, disconnected products and services increase over time

Shaping and introducing new innovation ecosystems is not easy but it has enormous potential to transform competition and deliver on this ‘seamless experience’ that will be valued and recognized by its unique set of offerings. It can become the unique competitive positioning due to this connected ecosystem of collaborators, it offers an advantage to all engaged in its potential as it has diversity, dynamics, differentiation and distinctiveness in its  design and delivery

Continue to browse on this site to help in this understanding of a new innovation era where ecosystem thinking and platform management are combining in ways that are giving far greater impact and growth to the business that participate. They offer a multiplier effect.

The post The Power of Innovation Ecosystems first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

By looking outside we open up. More and more demands are being placed on us via our customers, suppliers, our regulators and a host of other stakeholders all wanting to contribute into our existing knowledge. The ability to collaborate, to cooperate is coming by purposefully designing ecosystems and platforms

We struggle to adapt to these new external pressures as the more we engage outside we realize there are (often) stark differences in approaching problems. This adaptation demands a very different approach to anyone organizations structures, processes and systems. They need to adapt to and support these changes in working within an ecosystem designed one.

We all need to be more flexible, adaptable and agile so our resources grow their capacity to absorb and strengthen the competency and capability in new more dynamic ways. To design in ecosystem thinking needs a very different approach.

Building Value into Networks

We need to ask specifically are we going to gain a significant advantage in working in networks as the work is highly demanding and calls for a very different mindset and business thinking application

I have written on this posting site many aspects of ecosystem thinking. One, I can point you to is “Connecting future value will come from ecosystem thinking”

We need to ask ourselves lots of questions. A useful post is “Designing our Innovation Ecosystem needs five considerations“

Why ecosystems have come of age in the business world.

To explore and exploit ‘the new,’ we have the opportunity to combine technology and leverage relationships to extract ‘greater’ meaning. Building a network of contacts, we are scaling and developing a more productive potential of something new.

We can, through data and exchanges, link up the real world and relate the physical and data worlds. Actually, we are building a digital-physical twin as we understand what is going on, explore how we can change it, and then compare this back in the digital world, that mapping back for all participants to work upon and extend it out. We are creating value in combining technology and relationships in any ecosystem design.

The ability to delve into or broaden out our thinking gives us these opportunities to extend what we have or create something new. In any ecosystem evolution, ‘something’ or ‘someone will exploit a gap, a niche, and utilize this. It takes time if it cannot build on its capabilities in that space, it needs to build up its environment around it.

We often limit our capabilities and capacity because we do not ‘stray’ from the knowns into the unknowns. Ecosystems that encourage that pushing frontiers to lead us often to finding that unexplored point. The combined realms of digital and physical meeting points allow us to do this in faster ways than ever before. We can reach wherever we want to go.

What are the on-going exchanges within the system that make up the communities for us?

As we interact what is the impact derived from the time it takes up for us to participate?

What ways can we extend, create and leverage the value. Can we convert a certain value into another that offers increased worth and growing usefulness?

We need to acquire, anchor and and transform this flow of new knowledge into future new worth.

Value Creation comes in many forms but it is the pivotal role of our intangibles that give it the greatest potential. Take a read of this “Exploring the Value of Your Innovation Capital“

– What makes up the negotiable and deliverables in what we do? Do we know all our capitals?

– What can be extracted as tangible benefits and intangible value exchanges that emerge as we explore them into more tangible ones?

– What impact these decisions and actions have to specific business activities, challenges and issues?

These make up the ‘currency’ of new value and are found across different networks and communities. We need to seek, find and engage in these.

Seeking out Social – Business Engagements

Organizations need to look for developing greater community engagement strategies.

This includes recognizing the new business goals social engagement can provide as social media relentlessly chips away at established practices

Every function is undertaking some form of transformation from technology and global digital networks.

* Ensure the leadership within the organization recognizes the opportunities and risks

* The necessary dedicated resources are made available that have the requisite skills

* The  building of response measures and actions in any growing social engagement

* Recognize the changes in working this shift to a greater ‘connected’ engagement means

* Prepare for engagement at growing scale, effect, shared value and increased insights.

* The increasing need for a modern engagement platform that listens, interacts, filters and provides.

Identity – Profiles and Reputation

As we look at our networks, both internally and externally we need to find clear identities, we need to build a profile that ‘speaks’ of reputation and trust. We have to become like-minded.

As we engage across different, often diverse resources we need to be authentic in how we go about our business. What we do, who we engage with it requires ‘relevancy’ to all

We need to place greater trust in others, as we perceive them so we can recognize their unique identities and contributions so we help build each other’s capabilities.

The level of engagement, our clarity and values build reputation and identity. The very patterns of participation and contribution are decided and often dictated at multiple levels by others, not ourselves.

We need clear identities that are the bedrock to build out our communities, based on reciprocating value and trust in how we exchange going forward.

To navigate through this often needs consistent support, it needs clarity of mind and underpinning of approach to draw out each of our unique identities.

Building an ecosystem design needs significant thinking through.

Take an extended browse through this posting site. Ecosystems and Platforms are discussed in different ways, you will find value as you browse. Ecosystem designs are critical to our “collective” future.

Let me help and contribute into your thinking, prompting you and encouraging you at the same time

The post Thinking About Relationship and Network Management first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

The ability to tackle those larger societal problems within an ecosystem, or combine unique resources to overcome a complex business challenge you are incapable of solving alone, does have greater potential in a collaborative adaptive system. Collaborating is the route to greater value and enhancing a shared objective, extending the scope and scale beyond just your borders or offering.

Ecosystem co-operations can allow you to align with others, totally outside your existing relationships, so you can enter new markets, explore new concepts and design, that would have been impossible as an individual organization.

Applying ecosystem thinking offers you the collaborative ability to extend beyond more traditional delivery channels, or being restricted to only utilizing your own existing infrastructure. It allows you to search and build on others that can add their specialization to build out that “greater” concept.

Merging tribes

We are all making greater connections within ourselves, as we find and connect, not just into our own “tribes” that all the different social platforms are providing, to establish our own personal identity.

Ecosystems built around specific platform designs are the future of innovation that takes designs and solutions into a new realm of opportunity, built on collaborative engagement and common missions. As we learn, we adapt, as we share, we grow but we do need to think ecosystems differently.

Measuring is different in applying ecosystem thinking.

To start, we need to measure far more in the following aspects as our starting point:

Linkages – content and productivity of relationships, alliances, collaborations, interactions, networks, clusters and all the complementary aspects and assets deployed to do this

Knowledge engagement – the ability to attract knowledge into the organization, through greater content and value, through the people involved and how we anchor and diffuse this new knowledge.

Intangible assets – increasingly people and the combination of their intellectual capital in knowledge, relationships and how they structure work will be the central focal point of innovation success.

Creating new conditions for innovation and creative actions that are collaborative – we need to develop the ability to ‘sense and respond’ to shifts in markets,’ read and react’ as information and intelligence flow in from a broader knowledge bank of contributors.

Greater awareness of the opportunities These come from the collaborators within the ecosystem but also cover a much wider awareness of the different competition. Evaluating and discussing these changes needs a highly collaborative environment in ‘real-time’ and we will become far more reliant on data and analytics for this. Open minds and frank exchanges give a greater dynamism.

Connecting those five critical aspects becomes vital.

As we learn to collect all this incoming knowledge (data-driven), this will then impact our own innovation programmes and require them to be more adaptive, dynamic and fluid. We need to recognize changing patterns, and then build in these reaction points to keep our own innovation activity staying ahead of the game.

Organising within Networks of Firms within multiple Ecosystems

The organization that envisages a changing world needs to organize around ecosystems to deliver on that vision to gain the leading influencer’s position by the ability to out-innovate and offer a product or service that gives a greater value ultimate buyer. The logic of the offering is rapidly appreciated due to its connective design.

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. What you see as needed is not the best and maybe different from first envisaged. It is better and evolutionary but demands more change and disruption internally. It allows for more breakthrough innovation, greater challenging of the existing status quo, and often taking organizations out of their existing comfort zones.

As we think ecosystems, we need to think differently.

Think carefully through any move to join innovation ecosystems. They do have a high, immensely attractive return, if managed well; they are nearly always disruptive to the existing markets and highly valuable to the participants. There also is a big ‘but’ here, since the pathway to get to that ‘success point’ is full of potential risk and immense ‘spent’ energy.

I will go into many of the risks and barriers in future posts but in the meantime…………

You need to get into a position to experiment, test, exploit, and explore limited ways to learn and adapt. It is even more dramatic in change than moving from closed to open innovation, it will challenge much that was only recently established to be radically redesigned and altered again.

There is so much to explore and build around ecosystem design and the thinking that needs to go into this. It is exciting to explore, learn and attempt to translate into the future innovation designs we need, built on highly collaborative concepts. Still, it needs a growing understanding of its potential, downsides and its more than likely disruptive nature to your existing systems of managing.

The post Thinking differently about Ecosystems first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

Ecosystems can offer so much connecting value out there to ‘form’ around.

The value of breaking down long-standing boundaries is occurring with or without you.

Barriers are dissolving as more recognize the need and value of coalescing around a networked ecosystem.

The chances for greater, more radical innovation to grow the business comes from exploring mutual opportunities to capture new economic value.

We are witnessing a very radical change, driven by technology, increasingly disrupting and breaking down past traditional boundaries, partly built to defend positions so as to achieve economic scale. Ecosystem thinking for designing the future of business collaboration is central to the changes we are navigating through today.

There is a new economic logic to build even greater scale, it involves greater complexity, yet its value proposition is to strive towards offer greater customer experience and satisfaction, where the solutions are valued highly in social and economic value.

Ones that get closer to their connected expectations and daily needs for solutions to solve, in far better ways, than that are presently offered. The innovative design has become paramount to these new offerings.

What we need to do is change our present constraints.

We have built-in constraints. They are holding us back. Boards and Senior Management have a lack of time, as they are often too busy, focusing on the day-to-day. They remain extremely nervous when they do not have clear lines of insight to make what they see as riskier decisions. Finally, they are struggling with their present organizational design to adjust and adapt to the changing external world, full of uncertainties. To dither, to put decisions off, to seek out more certainty is not a position of any strength, it is the catalyst to eventual destruction. We need to face these inbuilt constraints.

There is growing value in engaging in business ecosystems

The potential impact of engagement has a range of benefits that need exploring and answering:

1. Ecosystem configurations enable the (one) business to offer more value to customers
2. They attract, more often than not, new customer bases to go on top of the traditional base
3. Ecosystem designs enable the business to create entirely new and different business opportunities
4. The growth potential can improve being part of a “network effect” due to new propositions
5. Structuring organizational design to leverage the value of collaborations gives greater flexibility
6. Contributing your part to a bigger ecosystem design allows a depth of focus on the activities you do well
7. You gain the ability to share market risks within a partnership of collaborators, committed to a shared vision and pursue new business opportunities that you could not afford on your own.
8. You grow your capabilities as you co-evolve, align future investments and find mutually reinforcing and supportive roles to exploit opportunities.
9. Ecosystems force you to become more proactive to thrive and perform, to master greater sophistication and complexity.
10. The potential impact with customers valuing these connected experiences and being able to participate, engage and contribute opens up value-adding potential

Summary

As you open yourself up to collaborating you open yourself up for greater learning and from this you can reshape your business design to adjust to this changing reality we are finding within a business; the need for designing our business into business ecosystems, to offer greater growth.

The post Connecting future value will come from Ecosystem thinking first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

Connecting into a Ecosystem is necessary to extract those collaborative synergies. It requires a host (platform provider), different apps, weblinks and consistent ways to integrate these so those using the airport or train station can navigate their way around their personal needs. It needs an ecosystem and platform management to bring this together.

We are increasingly expecting as consumers, uninterrupted connectivity, and virtual integration and that need for continued connectivity will spur new value propositions for technology and AI to take over and manage more of your daily, repetitive tasks.

It is this constantly connecting-up that is constantly layering mini-ecosystems onto each other so experiences improve as these ecosystems connect and work out what is needed to be delivered.

If we look around we are seeing increasingly the cross-industry ecosystem exploding.  

We have new ecosystems that are building new value in offering mobile commerce, building digital into all that we undertake increasingly in retail, banking, and entertainment. We are seeing new energy solutions emerge in Agriculture, Energy, Utilities. We are seeing a ‘connected difference’ in the Automotive, Driving, linking to Postal services, electronic transfers, blockchain transactions, purchasing across most of our goods, both personal and in business and exploring concepts in Health solutions that require cross-industry collaborations.

We see electronic capital trading getting faster and faster by the application of data flows, analytics and software that automates the trading decision. We are connecting into Public Services to gain insight and seek new value. Manufacturing is connecting up through its Industry 4.0 drive.

We have Artificial Intelligence increasingly working, either in the background or foreground for decision-making. We are building platforms and connecting up the individual ecosystems of (internal) knowledge into these new creators of value, based on collaboration, mutually shared interest and vision and in the co-operation that emerges around the extensive use of platforms and technology application.

The smartphone is to date, our greatest ecosystem, and platform, as individuals as it is all wrapped up into one personalized connected ecosystem and the phone is the platform. It is rapidly becoming the source of information, value generator and our personalized “dual world” as it learns what we need and is increasingly responding to mirror our world.

Just image the ecosystem of connectors we require within our daily lives, living in “smart” cities.

The opportunity to connect the providers of ‘hard’ services (energy, equipment, construction, utilities, etc) with our ‘soft’ needs (where to go, what we can do, order, where to park, what to do and see) requires huge collaborative efforts but the reward has significant benefits. Smart cities attract ‘smart’ people that attract ‘smart’ institutions and eventually ‘smarter’ business entities.

The connecting brainpower allows everything to manage their own personal speed of things, a flow that can potentially reduce redundancy and enhance engagement. The connections begin to reshape everything through the data; communications, public services, responses to crisis and opportunity, being aware. The smarter in the use gets increasingly channelled, as this increasing flow of data to analyze, target and coordinate life in the city, can allow for a better way for all to connect to that city and personally identify.

Returning to more collaborative approaches we build out the network of engagement.

To do this you need to build City Ecosystems and have highly engaging platforms. Engagement and connectivity change life, we know that through the essential need today of the Internet. Focusing on these two accelerators of change, engagement and connectivity will change urban life as it involves citizens increasingly in shaping the future.

A connected city gives a place we all want to connect with and value. We need more communities and senses of purpose to repurpose post-corona.

Post Corona we need to change the way we have lived. We need to move from individuals extracting from society towards communities engaging and exploring the environment around us to enrich our society.

We need cross-collaborative ecosystems in the future world

This is a very different potential in the new business models for all involved. The period ahead is going to be huge “reset” within ourselves, within the way we go about and organize work. A world built on increasing collaboration, cross-industry co-operations that have the technology, digitalization and innovation at the core.

A world built around Ecosystems and Platform design offers cross-collaboration potentials.

The post Look around you the cross-industry or community ecosystem is exploding. first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

The global challenge of climate change is coming rapidly to the points where it is forcing governments, businesses and knowledge organisations all over the world to mobilise behind carbon-reducing innovations, e.g. large-scale renewable energy implementation and electrification.

When it comes to innovation and leading the energy transition, Europe is showing clear leadership and in one specific and important technology, a global leader in electrolysis technology required to produce green hydrogen. The challenge today is to convert that leading position into a sustaining best of class one, that leads the world in electrolyzer expertise, production and research.

Today, Europe has a promising start, but it has significant challenges to break down the silo’s of knowledge and expertise and seize this opportunity to learn how to collaborate and build a thriving, robust and collaborative ecosystem around the building of a world-leading position in the electrolyzer market space.

At this time though, despite a promising outlook for the use of the eölectrolyzer for hydrogen, water electrolysis technology is not sufficiently mature to fit that purpose. It still is at a limited scale and is not yet at the point of the expectations building up around it. An enormous challenge lies ahead in upscaling currently available technologies to GW-scale factories required to drive forward the energy transition.

Recently announced is a HySpeed Innovation Joint Action Plan paper, where it is proposed that top Europe’s RTOs build a collaborative ecosystem and rally behind a call of joint mobilisation to share research infrastructure, build the independent expertise, by focusing on the next-generation technologies and facilities for testing, validation and monitoring.

They, the collaborating labs, see this as “an absolute prerequisite to reach climate neutrality by 2050 or preferably earlier”.

European organizations hold significant patents and have built up the leading position of supplying electrolyzers across the globe. This is clear, in the simple fact that most of the industry leaders are currently located in Europe. Yet, when implementation and especially upscaling, are at stake, there lies a serious challenge in maintaining and exploiting this position.

It is suggested a real necessity is to build an Electrolyzer Ecosystem in Europe, I totally agree with that need Within this many of the challenges can be tackled in a collaborative environment by Europe’s companies and have stronger collaboration exchanges with these RTOs and other research institutes to provide a key role to play to accelerate understanding and exchange best practices on Electrolyzers and Green Hydrogen challenges and possible solutions.

These RTO’s see three sets of opportunities to accelerate the developments for upscaling of WE technologies and have been identified that form around this joint action plan Initially, these opportunities are to organize the RTO network: (i) Connecting Hydrogen labs; (ii) Establishing and setting clear performance standards and deliverables; and (iii) Monitoring performance of subsidized pilots to build a database of business case potential.

A vital node within a broader Ecosystem

This has a critical node within a greater Ecosystem if it can be organized and coordinated. Perhaps this Hydrogen Ecosystem can be coordinated by the Hydrogen Europe as the European association representing the interest of the hydrogen and fuel cell industry and its stakeholders. At present Hydrogen Europe has more than 160 companies, 78 research organisations and 25 national associations as members, our association encompasses the entire value chain of the European Hydrogen and fuel cell ecosystem collaborating in the Fuel Cell Hydrogen Joint Undertaking. They are well placed to turn their work into orchestrating in a more designed fashion, the European Ecosystem for Hydrogen.

The Electrolyzer is critical for Green Hydrogen to be delivered at scale.

The paper produced by The understanding of the Electrolyzer value chain would be required to understand the capacity to economically produce, store, transport and use clean (carbon-free) hydrogen as part of renewables centred energy system to greater accelerate where hydrogen is seen as an essential enabler in our energy transition.

These initial Ecosystem proposal from Europes RTO’s are presented in the position paper ‘HySpeedInnovation’ in which some leading European Research and Technology Organisations came together to describe the upscaling challenges that lie ahead, and how the knowledge institutions can come together to tackle these challenges to make Europe a leader in the field of electrolysis, makes great sense. Still, it needs this “attachment” into a broader European Hydrogen Ecosystem to turn this into a robust solution.

I have written on this posting site-many of the required Ecosystem needs, principles and requirements to make and approach have a potentially robust solution to build around, but it needs a strong orchestrator and a broad-based platform for sharing as two of its very basic requirements.

The Research Institutions urging action

These are present including some of Europe’s leading research institutions such as TNO, joined by the German RTOs Fraunhofer (IFAM and ISE) and Forschungszentrum Jülich (IEK14), the Norwegian SINTEF and France’s CEA.

The RTOs also recommend a supporting role for the European Commission and national authorities. I would view these roles as far from supporting but more the catalysts to enable the work from the RTO’s to be valued and widely dispersed.

Within any emerging ecosystem approach, there are other knowledge institutions from the EU Member States, such as the network Hydrogen Europe Research, which represents several hundred companies and organisations in the field of hydrogen.

The challenges are formidable, taken from the position paper.

1. Working towards the significant upscaling of production capacity

2. Resolving the present fragmented of knowledge across facilities and countries

3. Working together in a collective pool requires greater European harmonization of approach and recognition

To quote from the HySpeedInnovation Plan

the Upscaling Challenge

“An enormous challenge lies ahead in upscaling currently available technologies to GW-scale factories required to drive forward the energy transition. For Europe, this challenge is reflected in the European Green Deal, which puts renewable hydrogen produced by electrolysis high on the political agenda. The European Hydrogen Strategy sets a target for 6 GW installed electrolyser capacity by 2024, and 2×40 GW by 2030 (40 GW in Europe and 40 GW in neighbouring countries) producing respectively 1 and 10 million tonnes of hydrogen annually. Tens of billions of euros are promised as a stimulus for this development. Several hydrogen strategies from European member states also have quantified targets for electrolysers according to their National Hydrogen Strategies looking at 2030 horizon, e.g. 6.5 GW in France, 5 GW in Germany, 3-4 GW in the Netherlands 1 GW in Portugal and 4 GW in Spain.”

The fragmented approach currently within Europe

The most important obstacle to overcome is not so much technical: the chain of manufacturers, their suppliers and the knowledge institutions themselves are fragmented across Europe, thus slowing down the innovations needed to develop a new generation of electrolysers. There is also a lack of sufficient demand for green hydrogen, partly because the costs are still too high. This makes the business case for large-scale application dependent on government incentives.

The barriers to work together are significant.

The electrolysis industry is currently dominated by very few large companies such as Siemens, ThyssenKrupp, Hitachi, Hydrogenics-Cummins, ITM Power, Areva H2Gen, McPhy or Sunfire. These system-integrators work closely together with a relatively small community of suppliers. Most are SME like McPhy, Areva, Hygs, h-tec, NEL, Teledyne, Plug Power, etc.

Roughly, half of all the electrolyser manufacturers are located in Europe, and their component suppliers are mostly European as well. Still, in the face of the upcoming challenge of upscaling, the industry remains too small, and activities are fragmented and poorly optimized.

The reality is due to significant internal R&D investments current suppliers of electrolyzers protect their IP and keep their suppliers closed. The drawback here is that innovative newcomers, even potentially innovative suppliers, have a hard time working their way into this market (market barriers at the entrance). This puts a brake on the dynamics of innovations that are needed to accelerate developments towards second and third-generation technologies.

Not having a highly collaborative environment is holding Europe back.

According to the RTO view, generally speaking, technological knowledge and expertise about electrolysers are fragmented across a broad range of actors, with lots of small entrepreneurs holding enormous potential for innovation, but lacking a shared direction and common frame of reference.

To help achieve a breaking down of barriers, there needs to be broader support from national governments and EU policymakers on the following topics:
• Facilitating the establishment of a coordinated EU infrastructure enabling to use/share water electrolysis testing facilities with improved data sharing across RTOs, developed and supported by leading national governments.
• The need for developing harmonized performance, safety, sustainability and quality standards setting international minimum requirements for
(components of) electrolysers, e.g. as materialised in tender specifications.
• The implementation of an Open Access policy for sharing aggregated data and learnings. Governments should make sharing of data and learnings of all subsidised research, demonstration and deployment projects mandatory

With this HySpeedInnovation Joint Action Plan, scientists at Europe’s RTOs are proposing to rally behind that call with state of the art innovation support through the mobilisation of our (shared) research infrastructure, independent expertise, next-generation technologies and facilities for testing, validation and monitoring.

The Ecosystem Approach is an absolute prerequisite here for Europe to be the leaders in the Electrolyzers.

Yet to really achieve a high cooperation environment, there needs an essential Orchestrator of this Ecosystem. As it is one cutting across national and regional boundaries the level of collaboration and coordination will be demanding and challenging. In many respects it os not ideal as a self-organization ecosystem, it needs a platform orchestrator and that in my opinion lies at the European Commission level or is designated to a body like the Hydrogen Europe to manage and coordinate.

We so often see Asian countries have this capability to manage within Ecosystems at a more successful rate. Examples of Taiwan, China and South Korea for building emerging technology ecosystems show others the way and here, in Europe, we seem less than capable to adopt a platform and ecosystem management approach. If we fail here then the Electrolyzer lead will transfer either to Asia or the US and yet another promising leadership passes through our European fingers.

To dramatically change the existing silo’s of knowledge to overcome the fragmentation of efforts and leverage on the currently existing assets and built-up frontrunner position needs a real enabler to manage the Ecosystem on an independent platform, as I just feel self-organizing ones for this are doomed without all the actors within the development and production of Electrolysers feeding into and collaborating through this platform.

The post The building of a Hydrogen Ecosystem in Europe first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

“Opening up our thinking towards ecosystems will have a powerful effect,

it alters the way we will approach problems today and in the future”

Our whole understanding of innovation is changing; we are evaluating and changing our existing focus from closed (internal orientation) into open and far more collaborative innovation (external orientation) with our collective thinking offering the acceleration into improving our innovation performances, leading to higher chances of achieving greater impact and success.

The search is seemingly on to find greater value, which will increasingly coalesce around different innovation ecosystems.  We need to form in many different ways significantly more relationships that increasingly matter to each organization, that add value, insight, and bring external expertise inside to work on ‘greater’ innovation solutions.

We are creating the potential to deliver innovative products and services that would not be delivered by only having the one organization attempting it. Complexity is on the rise, offering discrete products is on the wane.

Firstly why are business ecosystems emerging as a real competitive force?

As we begin to open up our thinking and begin to focus on the concept of ecosystems, it will increasingly have a powerful effect on our future growth perspectives in considering alternatives and possibilities.

The network of different partners will all contribute to this often ‘emergent’ thinking and quickly increase the total sum of the value.

The single industry and business-specific approach are seeing change; many companies are exploring the value of becoming involved in a business ecosystem that crosses a variety of industries to build new communities that have the capacity to transform existing environments.

One has to recall the “battle of devices has now become a war of building the better ecosystem.” It is not one single product that is chasing in crowded, highly competitive fields.

We are looking to increase the share of minds, engagement, and increasing preferences reflecting these changing habits, tastes, and lifestyles. To plugin to achieve this ‘paradigm shift,’ the search is on forming the ecosystem or set of ecosystems that can deliver on this ‘transformation’ going on in front of our eyes.

The realization becomes one of embracing innovation ecosystems.

Today, this growing realization that thinking ecosystems allow for a new frame and mindset that taps into different and diverse relationships, partnerships, alliances, and collaborations unthinkable without the enablers to make these connections through technology and more open platforms where you can come together and collaborate.

The increasing value of participating in ecosystems allows for large and small organizations to create, scale, and serve markets in ways unimaginable previously.

The ability to interact and co-create in increasingly sophisticated and novel ways opens up new opportunities. These ecosystems form a bond of shared interest, recognition, and purpose, which quickly becomes established as the new ‘commons’ in sharing and contributing.

So the challenge is for organizations to think differently.

Firstly thinking ecosystems allows for going out of normal scope, it allows you to open up your thinking to exploring the unimaginable of the past and transform this past ‘norm’ into the practice of your future.

We see the most valuable companies emerging today are largely based on sophisticated platform business models where ecosystems are vital to their health.

There is a caveat to this need to change.

The more disruptive you seek to make your solution, the more the ecosystem must be shaped, changed, or simply created. Ecosystems are hard, demanding and complex work. If you commit to having an ecosystem design, be ready to challenge everything and most probably you will end up changing everything!

Placing a new product in an existing ecosystem, or worse, ignoring the ecosystem and expected total solution means your product or service will have little impact and will become a commodity quickly.

The “dependence” factor, the inter-relationship dependence is there as it builds around your basic concept, it builds the connected value.

Shaping or introducing a new ecosystem is not easy but transforms competition; it provides distinct competitive and customer propositions. 

Also, by thinking about ecosystems and platforms and equally developing the understanding of the seamless total solution that the customer expects, these necessary innovation ecosystems will emerge as innovation centres of the future.

It ‘signals’ the amount of innovation that must be done on the product or service and on the channel, the business model, and on building and exploiting all the relationships within the network to make it distinctive and valuable. Innovation needs to move into this different connected era.

Ecosystems are powerful,if you are not so comfortable in what this would mean then there is no better opportunity to begin to find out

The post The power of ecosystem thinking first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.

Collaborating in collective ways helps break down complexity. To be ready to respond we must be ready to seek out unexpected outcomes, to be increasingly exposed to new opinions, experiences, and to learn from all those adjacencies and external connections, so as to help us add and define new potential within our domain of expertise.

In our past management practices, we have operated and exploited the linear world for ever-increasing efficiencies and effectiveness. This relied on stability, predictability, and a willing end-user, ready to accept ‘our’ offer of product or service. All three of these conditions are increasingly absent from our world today and will increasingly be challenged in the future.

Our increasing connectivity, brought about by our digital world is giving us increasing volume, richness at increasing speed. We are in a hyper-connected world, potentially global for all of us and increasingly we will operate in interdependent ecosystems that allow us to collaborate and share, driving up awareness and performance.

What will be rewarded in this connecting world is the agility to respond, the ability to absorb and learn quickly, and the nimbleness to translate and adapt new learning into insights and eventual outcomes, that build out our businesses, keeping them healthy, growing, and sustainable.

Classic models of management get broken down in any ecosystem approach, that is why I believe we must search for ways to adapt to this new world of ecosystem and platform collaboration.

It requires some very different management thinking, let me offer some thoughts:

Our world is shifting from scalable efficiency to scalable learning

In the work of John Hagel and John Seely Brown and their associates at Deloitte University Press, this scalable change from efficiency to learning is a central tenet of their work. Achieving scale is critical for all in business, be it the entrepreneur or start-up or the large institutions wanting to span the world. If you wanted to scale it had to be “efficient and effective” in our past approaches.

Yet as the two John’s point out that is great in the stable, more predictable world or market conditions of the past but not when everything is evolving rapidly or changing before our eyes. The efficiency mantra often allows for applying the “lowest common denominator of need” and reduces the impact of ‘true’ innovation.

The ability to adapt to our digital world

We are now in a world that sees exponential change caused by digital technologies, this is making everything we do as uncertain. We are seeing increasing friction, deteriorating trust, and growing gaps in expectancy between “what we want and expect with what we actually receive” and institutions need to respond to these pressures. The pressures of sorting false information with the relevant knowledge needed to build on what you have to improve it.  It cannot be the approach anymore as “business as usual” it needs a new recognition, the new normal means we need to act and respond differently.

We are recognizing “existing knowledge is depreciating at an accelerating rate”. To create new knowledge we have to step out of our silo of the one institution into a collaborative world, connecting with others where the physical, virtual, and management of systems help accelerate learning.

Increasingly these learnings will come through ecosystems and platforms where you can meet and exchange in systematic and holistic ways, building growing trusted relationships, sharing, and exploring ‘collective’ knowledge to solve common problems.

You move from the need of conformity to be efficient, seeking out where you fit within a ‘given’ system you look for increasing the ‘flow’ of learning by encouraging increasing fluidity and being highly adaptive. Your role is not to fit as such, it becomes how you can separate, identify and deliver more value, to translate and learn faster, to rapidly connect understanding, ideas, and potential outcomes for the new value.

Balancing fluidity and stability

The world we live in is relentless, it is demanding and constantly changing. We begin to believe it is in a “continuously unstable state” yet it is this ongoing receiving of contradictions we can build a different, more fluid state that is adaptive, responsive, and encourages different thinking to break through our bewilderment.

We need to build far more for countervailing functions and opinions, have greater understandings of pattern recognition and maintenance, and be highly adaptive in our outcomes. We need to keep balancing the acts of fluidity with stability.

To get to a point of being fluid we need to hone our navigation skills, we need to have more assignment driven work, not stuck in repeating work that can be automated far more effectively in today’s digital world.

Where do we start to think this through?

We must start by establishing a different boundary building understanding (governance, risk-taking, ability to recognize managing exceptions are becoming the rule in individual consumer worlds).

We need a growing identity formation set of mechanisms and responses (in customer touchpoints, response alternatives, conflict skills to resolve issues early) and develop the problem-solving architecture to be constantly evolving (shared, reinforcing, and breaking down present orthodoxies).

Ambidexterity and countervailing processes need developing and embedding. Achieving a constant duality to manage in our three horizons that come into play, to manage the short-term (differently), and pivot into the longer-term. It is the horizon two exploration and exploitation that allows this change in managing transit from the old (h1) to the new (h3). We need to re-enforce and extend (h2-), we need to ‘undo’, explore and redesign (h2+).

The challenge becomes how can we eventually move towards a fluid state?

If we can design a framework that transforms us into being highly fluid and adaptive, we can move through horizon two and its conflicting challenges. We are seeking to balance stability with an ongoing need for dynamism and responsiveness, at agile and fast ‘reaction’ times from our ‘incoming learning’ and ‘outgoing value-added‘ outcome

To become fluid we need to absorb and respond at a faster rate and that comes from the increasing flow of new knowledge. We need to be highly adaptive to a constant, multi-faceted world of connections, systems and knowing where the different pieces need to be found, so we can then ‘pieced’ together into the ‘new whole’ you are needing to design, at the individual or institutional design level.

To get to a point of being fluid we need to hone our navigation skills, we need to have more assignment driven work, not stuck in repeating work that can be automated far more effectively in today’s digital world. We need to be looking to constantly enter and exit projects where we can truly contribute to driving up our own confidence and belief, our personal satisfaction, and contributing worth.

We need to be more agile, iterative, to be encouraged to be experimenting and exploring. We need to believe and given the trust to execute and drive our results into more value-add. We need to seek out empowerment, participate in collaborative endeavors, and most importantly grasp the makeup of value creation. To get to this point we need to build one of those boundary-spanning guidelines of a sound conflict resolution pathway for ourselves, our customers, and our institutions and these will be ‘living constantly evolving pathways‘ that feed on new learning.

To get to this ‘fluid state‘ we all must strive for authenticity, trust, and recognition.

This authenticity and trust will only come from a real willingness to seek out diversity in opinion, knowledge, and experience. We all need to have higher visibility and seek an understanding of what this means in risk and reward for taking this path. Our growing ability to look to constantly enter and exit projects where we can truly contribute to driving up our own confidence and belief, our personal satisfaction, and contributing worth.

If we can design a framework that transforms us into being highly fluid and adaptive, we can move through horizon two and its conflicting challenges. We are seeking to balance stability with an ongoing need for dynamism and responsiveness, at agile and fast ‘reaction’ times from our ‘incoming learning’ and ‘outgoing value-added‘ outcome

Seeking out the relevant flows within new knowledge for increasing scalable learning, our new institutional state.

The stock of our existing knowledge is rapidly diminishing, we need to seek out the flow of new knowledge. Our fixed and enduring know-how and sets of experiences are being diminished in their value inside organizations.

We need to harness the capacity of learning through the competencies for new knowledge acquiring. We need to replenish the internal diminishing stocks of knowledge with a constant flow of new knowledge. This comes from outside, it comes through networks, relationships, and collaborations increasingly built on ecosystem and platforms.

We need a call to arms, to establish a new set of operating principles

It is our increasing ability to participate in this growing formation of managing knowledge flows, harnessed through digital solutions, as they will through practice and time, move us towards achieving a greater value creation. We move towards an increasingly collaborative environment, between partners and appreciating all stakeholders but also more specifically sharing more understanding and exchanges with customers, all contributing, increasingly aimed at their knowledge, insights, and needs to finding joint solutions and resolving challenges.

To achieve better outcomes and to drive sustained growth we need different management practices. We require scalable participation (ecosystems) to relate too and generate new knowledge flows. We need to be increasingly responsive, adaptive, and fluid in any design of structures and solutions.

Performance requires us to quickly learn and translate, that cannot come from the pursuit of efficiency, it comes from learning to be highly adaptive and responsive, to have a high level of fluidity to fuse all the flows of knowledge into new potential value creation.

In summary

We do need this new management model to adapt to the digital world and all the uncertainty of our prevailing conditions of more open competitive and challenging markets, more demanding customers, and the constant waves of information and ‘forces of change’ raining down on us.

What is clear is we need a new way of working to counter this sense of constant disruption and exponential change. It is the recognition that ecosystems and platforms will be playing a far more critical role in our managing, that we need to become ready to fuse, flow, and become far more fluid in the ways we work.

**Largely taken from some early work by me as the author.

• Amended on 7th October 2020.

The post The future of managing will be through ecosystems and platforms first appeared on Your Ecosystem Design Hub.