Ecosystem design thinking

Unlocking growth and value creation through sustainability as the driver

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Sustainability is a Journey of Discovery

We increasingly recognize that the application of technology and the constant searching for new business models are opening up business into a sharing economy, where business recognizes all the different roles and contributions of governments, businesses, and society.

It is the realization that the growing power of collective action will address the complexities and larger-scale challenges we are facing today.

The recognition is growing that the environment, social and economic elements are far more intertwined and connected. Businesses are searching for greater links in their products, services, and operations to internally seek out an impact.

Business is becoming well aware that today’s consumer is looking that much harder for their solutions to be offering sustainability, alongside quality, availability, and ‘fair’ price.

Building trust, resiliency and a more integrated business model

There is a greater trust in relationships if a business addresses its environmental footprint and works to change its social impact in ways to protect our planet.

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Affordability versus Sustainability – a cause to be addressed

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The concept of Sustainability is still being pushed out in the future for many of us.

Why should we worry today? The “judgement” is that those Eco-friendly products seem to always be more expensive due to often unexplained or unfamiliar concepts.

As long as we can afford what we know and trust, then why worry or change? The question is, will this abundance, this acceptance that it is there, finally be changing?

Today we can’t see the value in shifting to a more sustainable pathway. We are expected to pay more for that higher cost of producing locally, growing food organically, using recycled materials, and many other factors that do add up to make a significant price difference when you compare.

We are reluctant to make the shift as it is still not compelling enough to change when we have abundant options.

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Human Ingenuity, Ecosystem Thinking, Embracing Innovation

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Today and in the future, we continue to take where we are in our technology and digital understanding and feed it more remarkable human ingenuity. Combining the collected knowledge found in a network of collaborators can dramatically advance the solutions sought by unlocking previously intractable problems.

We have entered the innovation era as we combine in ways not possible until recently. If we take any industry, any societal problem, as we tackle climate challenges, the power of connected innovation will make a difference and give us our breakthroughs.

We are still searching for the “how and what.” We need to push ourselves by opening up to the “where and why” in a network of connecting ways. We are recognizing sharing what we know accelerates understanding for all those involved.

Recognizing ecosystems are vital, combining human, technology, and data allows us to pursue multiple possibilities, explore them faster than before, evaluate them in quicker, more imaginative ways and scale those that show promise.

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Ecosystems are really important, are we correctly applying them in Business?

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I have been reading the Ecosystem Restoration Playbook – a practical guide to healing the planet, developed for World Environment Day 2021 to kick off the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030)

I do like the explanation of Ecosystems, lifted from the restoration playbook (see below). There is some real contradiction to how business applies the ecosystem thinking, and this post attempts to look at the differences and implications of treating ecosystems differently. This use of “ecosystems” is degrading as much as we are in our Natural Systems, mostly in the eventual resource depletion and our insatiable consumption.

By taking this business thinking of Ecosystems into continually pushing for greater consumer consumption is a growing problem. We are at a time when we need to place a break on this, and take a different position of replenishing or restoring what we have, and reuse it. With our drive for continued growth consumption and exploitation, we are compounding our planet’s problems.

I wanted to explore some differences within Natural Ecosystems and how Business uses Ecosystems to search for growth, scale, and dominance. We are in need to change our consumption habits and business growth models.

This is not a definitive list. It is more to stop and reflect where we are heading on applying ecosystem thinking, perhaps addressing its accepted context or adapting it to fit its new one being push in the business world.

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Reshaping the core of your business through a focus on Sustainability

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If the decision is made to become more focused on “being sustainable”, drastic shifts in direction will undoubtedly occur.

The shift from that fear of being disrupted due to the digital transformation is being replaced by the need to build a sustainable company built on increasing insight and connected understanding, seeking and exploring, experimenting and confirming a new value equation.

A huge mental mindset needs to make leaps of faith and adjustments to this new order of focus.

That set of decisions will require a dedicated, focused, systematic need to assess the portfolio and the operating conditions. This goes way beyond the present “where to play and how to win”; this becomes as much for the long game as managing the short term.

The four focus points for Sustainability

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Orchestrating the New Ecosystem Business Design.

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There is a growing body of work about “orchestration” and its need in the business world. As we form a greater association with ecosystems as the business design, the orchestrator becomes central to its performance and success.

Orchestration has become synonymous with managing or dealing with (specifically) external partners. The need is to learn to cooperate to produce something different and original, usually in a platform and ecosystem arrangement.

I am continually reading about scale, modular structures, governance, the advantage of asset-light business models where the possibilities of speed and breadth of open innovation need to “kick in.” Orchestration can take on a lot, but we need to define the role a little more, in my opinion.

I often wonder if all this orchestration through ecosystem design does achieve that radical breakthrough or have become just another solution or coordinating mechanism and a convenient “tag” to attach to it to consider?

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Ecosystems offer us infinite possibilities

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The new environment providing by adopting ecosystem thinking offers us infinite possibilities. It opens us all up to new knowledge, collaboration and sources of new value and innovative impact.

We have new frontiers and unexploited opportunities everywhere when we push through today’s constraints. We have more connected hardware to open up our physical and digital realms, and thirdly we have access all the time to more real-world data than ever before—the birth of the digital and physical ecosystems that enable innovation like never before.

We have some awesome power available to us; can’t we unlock the potential to change where we seem to be heading?

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Accelerating Innovation comes from Ecosystem thinking

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Just a reflective moment I am sharing here on the place of Ecosystem thinking.  We need to recognize the changes we need to undertake, even in a world of infinite possibilities. We chose to explore new ways of working; new solutions to difficult challenges need a new approach to accelerating innovation through ecosystem thinking.

In my view:

“Today and in the future, to take where we are in our technology and digital understanding and feed it greater human ingenuity, we give it intelligence, real new intelligence not just the artificial stuff. When we combine the collected knowledge found in a network of collaborators, we can dramatically advance the solutions sought by unlocking previously intractable problems.”

The new environment offers us infinite possibilities

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Making the case for Ecosystem thinking

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Business is certainly changing

Credit Tatiana Plakhova @ complexitygraphics.com

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”.

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Creating A Unique Nested Hydrogen Ecosystem for the Energy Transformation

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Ecosystems hold a certain fascination for me. The ecosystem approach can tackle and help resolve some of the more complex issues we face.

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.

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