Knowing where your Ecosystem approach “sits” relative to competitors needs a common comparable approach. You not only see where your own ecosystem is positioned but how it differs and very often being evaluated by partners and customers to understand differences to make their decisions to participate, engage or commit.
Most organizations are building or scaling ecosystems without a structured way to access whether their ecosystems are optimal or fit for growth and stress in changing market conditions.
By outlining in a short series a comparison of a selected group of Industrial giants and how they are managing their Ecosystem building you gain an understanding of what this IIBE Lens can provide.
Comparisons through the IIBE Lens for Ecosystem Opportunities
So the question here is “What the IIBE Lens reveals that Strategy reviews so often fail or miss in their assessments.” Ecosystems over time naturally build “tensions” progressively. The aim of the IIBE lens is to identify these tensions and gaps and assist management to recalibrate their Ecosystem in more dynamic ways to evolve.
Here, we are using the Intelligent & Integrated Business Ecosystem (IIBE) Lens to compare four global industrial leaders — Siemens AG, GE Vernova, Schneider Electric, and ABB — all of whom have been evaluated previously through IIBE informed analysis.
The IIBE is a diagnostic systematic approach designed to assess how well an organization is designed to operate, adapt and evolve through ecosystems, especially under changing market conditions. It seeks out tensions, gaps and opportunities that so often cannot be named but are giving cause to growing discomfort.
The intent here, in post two of this short series, is not to explain IIBE principles, but to focus on observable outcomes through what the IIBE lens offers: how each company positions its ecosystem, how attractive and usable those ecosystems are for customers and partners, the maturity of their platforms, and where gaps or constraints remain.
Looking through the IIBE Lens at Ecosystem Opportunities
A New Perspective on Ecosystem Strategy
Executives concern themselves with their Ecosystems, in design, in what they offer and the ability to gain the collaborations required to justify the investment and commitments. Often as a real concern is “Is your Ecosystem performing” That is exactly why you should be worried if you are unsure. Are your results masking and eroding your ecosystem fitness?
Discovering understandings of partner adoption attraction, the ability to assess if your orchestration costs are rising or actually being pushed down to clients, the actual platform engagement is it transactional rather than relational. So is your Ecosystem performing, what would a structured lens provide?
Business ecosystems provide a real, sustainable and significant competitive advantage by shifting a company to a higher level of collaborative, networked value creation. Instead of just selling a single product, you are selling a “connected solution” built and supported by a web of partners, providing greater value and outcomes as a result.
In this short series during this week I will be exploring the IIBE Lens, a way of explaining Ecosystems for organizations that provides an understanding of their maturity, health and appeal, as well as providing comparisons in their competitive field. It builds out different ecosystem approaches to show value, weakness and further opportunities, applying Ecosystem thinking and design applications.
Business leaders acknowledge that ecosystems are now critical to growth, innovation, and resilience, far fewer can answer a harder question:“What is the return on our ecosystem investments — and how do we know?”
The IIBE Delivers Measurable ROI Across Three different Client Groups Making Them Investable in returns and gains to advance your Ecosystem thinking.
The challenge is not a lack of activity. It is a lack of measurable clarity. Ecosystems are often positioned as strategic necessities but managed as experimental side initiatives, with limited visibility into value creation, decision confidence, or time-to-impact.
In today’s business environment, it has been suggested that more than 70 % of leaders struggle with ecosystem planning, understanding, or extracting value. Many initiatives stagnate in fragmentation, misaligned purpose or slow value pathways — because ecosystems are still treated as buzzwords rather than operating systems for adaptive competitive advantage.
The Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE) is uniquely positioned to solve this exact problem: to help organisations diagnose their ecosystem health, implement structured pathways, and extract new value from their collaborative networks in practical, measurable ways.
Below is how each of our three principal client groups — Mature Ecosystem Leaders, Disruptors & Emerging Challengers, and Nascent/Laggards/Emerging Catalysts — we are suggesting how they should recognise the problem, what they need to value the most, and how a dedicated IIBE offering gives them confidence, coherence, and competitive edge.
Recognizing the value of Connected Business Ecosystems.
The Compelling Case for Business Ecosystemsto Navigate in the New World of Realities
“We are operating in a fundamentally different world – no longer linear and predictable, but a dynamic, networked, and rapidly evolving landscape.” Our traditional, hierarchical structures, designed for stability and control, are increasingly becoming strategic liabilities, making us slow to adapt, vulnerable to disruption, and limited in our ability to innovate.
This new reality is not just a trend; it’s a profound shift that creates urgent triggers for change: unprecedented technological disruption, rapidly shifting customer expectations, complex industry-wide challenges, and intense competitive pressures.
The most fundamental “meta-trigger” for the rise of business ecosystems is the shifts taking place from a linear, predictable, hierarchically controlled world to ones that reguires a dynamic, networked, adaptive, and often unpredictable reaction, requiring a different managment thinking. Business Ecosystem design and thinking provide the very bedrock upon which the necessity of ecosystem strategies rests. It is the fundamental context that makes ecosystem adoption an existential imperative for many organizations.
Business ecosystems are not merely a business model; they are the strategic imperative and the necessary organizational evolution to thrive in this new connected world.
Dynamic Ecosystems are at the heart of Business Ecosystems
So what is the crucial role of Dynamic Ecosystems? We shouldn’t understate or misunderstand their importance. Let me summarize and emphasize the significance of Dynamic Ecosystems in this post.
By placing the emphasize in Dynamic Ecosystems and by properly integrating the concept within an integrated interconnected Ecosystem, we can create a more accurate and useful representation of how modern business environments actually function. It is flowing and enabling part of Ecosystems.
This offers a detailed exploration to the vital part of Dynamic Ecosystems play in Ecosystem Management that will help organizations have a better understanding to leverage the complex, interconnected, and rapidly changing nature of their business landscapes.
Business Ecosystems are interconnected and integrated to build unique value and greater resilience
Unlocking Transformative Value: The Power of Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystems
In today’s dynamic world, businesses face unprecedented complexity. The key to navigating this landscape and achieving future-proof growth lies in embracing Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystems.. This isn’t just an evolutionary step; it’s a fundamental shift in how organizations create value, drive innovation, and achieve long-term success.
The primary goal of these ecosystems is to navigate business complexity through collaborative efforts, emphasizing openness, adaptability, and shared vision. It’s about moving beyond traditional silos and fostering a cohesive whole where mutual value and prosperity are paramount. This strategic imperative creates a virtuous cycle of value, resilience, and adaptability.
Needing Strong Business Ecosystems by building them future-proof
Globally, leaders face immense pressure to innovate, protect and grow their business while navigating complex market shifts. I specialize in designing and implementing robust innovation ecosystems that empower organizations to accelerate their market transition and secure long-term, profitable growth.
Are you looking to future-proof your business in a rapidly evolving landscape?
My research has explored the world of Business Ecosystems, and I recently ran a check on the specific parts or themes I have explored and written about.
I focus on ecosystems from a business or society perspective. Specifically, I approach Ecosystems from the innovation, dynamic or business angle. I am amazed at what I have gathered, in knowledge, insights and researching consistently that builds out practical and applicable advice, to those implementing or simply understanding the dynamics needed for Ecosystem design and thinking.
Recently I went through a fairly comprehensive audit of my work to date around Business Ecosystems. The recommendations were to reduce the broader scope and provide more quantifiable metrics, emphasis and deepen more dynamic ecosystems in frameworks and the mechanics behind them, build technology into its rightful position as a foundational element into Ecosystem thinking, and give focused services that provide distinctive returns.
Like any good audit, it was detailed, pretty extensive and did force me to rethink. The highlighting of different gaps were suggested as ones able to be closed with a clearer focus, yet suggested this more distinctive shift was needed to place fresh emphasis on outcomes in given offerings. In other words tighten the value propositions (VP).
