Ecosystems and Platforms

How are you facing a changing more dynamic world? In partnership or isolation?

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Business Ecosystems are interconnected and integrated to build unique value and greater resilience

How are you facing a changing, world defined by a growing volatility (VUCA)?

This LAUNCHES a definitive dynamic ecosystem blueprint focusing on the integrated concepts and frameworks I have been working on for the past 20 months. The research and design are providing a new architecture. It is distinctive and has many parts that will emerge in the next months.

Here I am introducing the solution concept to overcome and redefine how organizations can create superior value and drive innovation in more distinctive and radical ways in a more dynamic world we are facing today.

The approach using the Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE) recognizes that value is no longer confined within the boundaries of a single enterprise but emerges from the synergistic interactions and contributions of diverse stakeholders

Letting go of our past– the legacies that constrain us

The organizational designs mostly today are still rooted in the industrial era and ill-equipped to meet the demands of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ubiquity (VUCA). We today require an unsentimental mind-shift in thinking, strategy approaches and execution design to adapt.

For decades, traditional business frameworks relied on a stable, predictable structure. The linear value chain and rigid hierarchy, with their clear lines of command and control, were the standard for maximizing efficiency and scaling operations.

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A New Strategy for a Complex World With The Transformative Power of Business Ecosystems

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The complexities within Business Ecosystems

In a world defined by volatility, complexity, and rapid change, traditional business models are showing their age. Linear value chains, siloed operations, and rigid hierarchies struggle to keep pace with the demands of modern markets. Enter the business ecosystem—a dynamic, interconnected network of partners, platforms, and shared capabilities that reshapes how organizations think, operate, and innovate. It is radically different from the “age of the industrial revolution”, it collaborates, evolves, adapts constantly and scales consistently on the connections and values it produces.

Business ecosystems aren’t just a trend that leaves behind our old business designs. They represent a fundamental shift in mindset, strategy, and execution. They challenge old assumptions, unlock new possibilities, and offer a resilient path forward in uncertain times.

Let’s explore how ecosystems transform organizations from the inside out. They are radically different

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Resilience Building for Ecosystems in Tough Economic Times

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Resilience Building for Ecosystems

Economic downturns force organizations to make hard choices. Budgets shrink, uncertainty grows, and risk tolerance drops. In this climate, investing in ecosystems might seem counterintuitive—but it’s actually one of the most prudent moves a forward-thinking organization can make. One of the most important needs is to look always to build resilience into all you do, Ecosystems can build that

Ecosystems—collaborative networks of partners, platforms, and shared technologies—offer a way to do more with less. They enable agility, reduce costs, and unlock new value streams. But to succeed, ecosystem investments during economic difficulty must be strategic, lean, and focused on long-term resilience.

Here’s how organizations can build ecosystem capabilities that deliver immediate value while minimizing financial exposure.

These are some general thoughts to trigger your thinking or make some of the suggested moves to shape your organization for agility and resilience through Ecosystem design and thinking. This can be the time to reshape your organizations agility and collaborative thinking.

Where do you start?

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Being Smart – Invest in Ecosystems During Recessions

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Being Smart Invest in Ecosystems During Recessions

When economic headwinds hit, conventional wisdom urges organizations to tighten belts, cut costs, and hunker down. But history—and strategy—suggests a more nuanced approach. Recessions, while challenging, also offer rare windows for bold moves. One of the most powerful yet underutilized strategies during downturns is investing in ecosystems.

Ecosystems—collaborative networks of partners, platforms, and shared resources—can help organizations weather economic storms and position themselves for accelerated growth when the tide turns. But convincing leadership to invest during a recession requires re-framing the conversation. It’s not about spending more—it’s about spending smarter.

Putting some of my opening thoughts into some form of “good” order, here is a view for considering Ecosystems

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Resolving Today’s Current Innovator’s Ecosystem Dilemma Progressively

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Recognizing the Innovator’s Dilemma with Ecosystems

What would force us to change or radically adjust our existing business trajectory? Can we afford to take another period of uncertainty, what are the risks? Does it make sense to alter our existing Business Models?

At some time it is absolutely right for the C-level to ask! It cuts to the core of the Innovator’s Dilemma applied to organizational transformation.

A terrific book, an Innovation foundational one, was “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail,” first published in 1997. It is most probably the best-known work of the Harvard professor and businessman Clayton Christensen. It describes how large incumbent companies lose market share by listening to their customers and providing what appears to be the highest-value products, but new companies that serve low-value customers with poorly developed technology can improve that technology incrementally until it is good enough to quickly take market share from established business (source Wikipedia). Today’ it is so different, anyone can take market share through applying technology thoughtfully.

This concept today faces far more “dilemmas” that can be more widely applied as the “disruptor” has even more “disrupting tools” at their disposal as they search and connect all the “dots” of opportunity that those incumbents will struggle to adopt though legacy or speed of market reaction. “Higher value” needs to be replaced with “Greatest Connecting Value”.

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Business Ecosystems can unlock game-changing potential- lift up your eyes.

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Business Ecosystems can unlock game-changing potential

We sometimes get sidetracked, caught up in the “weeds” of making step-by-step progress, seemingly against odds that are often resistant and unyielding to the notion of change or alternatives to what we are doing.

Today many businesses are floundering in low or no-growth environments and applying approaches that just are not equipped to deal with today’s complex challenges. We are facing market conditions caught up in volatility and ongoing disruptions.

We are equally in the age of harnessing collective intelligence to be in a better position to address these complex challenges. The combined power of Gen AI, humans and diversity of understanding need to be harnessed to open up entirely new realms of possibility. Enter the power of Business Ecosystems.

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An Emerging Blueprint for thinking through Business Ecosystems

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Integrated Blueprint Framework for Business Ecosystem Design and Thinking

So why do we need a Blueprint for thinking through the Business Ecosystem needs of future business? ​

  • A blueprint is needed to thrive and find solutions in the face of complexity and uncertainty. ​
  • Ecosystem thinking and design should be central to this blueprint, as it offers the potential for transformative power and new impact, value, and growth. ​
  • The integration of business ecosystems needs the interconnected parts, with each layer contributing to the whole. ​
  • The three main layers are Strategic, Operational and Crosscutting in design and building blocks
  • The need is to move towards a more comprehensive understanding of the values of synergies, interdependencies, and exponential value created when these layers are interconnected.

We need to appreciate the real business ecosystems we need, they are radically different than most of how we presently undertake Business.

What we first need to do is appreciate this significant difference of what are Business Ecosystems BEFORE we jump into chasing different growth, impact or business opportunity. It needs to recognize the most likely outcome is likely to be a new collaborative Business Model and ask “are we ready for that?”

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A fear of missing out will drive you towards Business Ecosystems models

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The Yin and Yang of Business- opportunity and risk. Image Adobe

Are we seeing increasing complexity within the business world? The search for growth is having real impact from changing political realities, regulatory and market conditions. We are in a fractured and polarized world at present and we all have to adapt and change how we go about our business. There is more uncertainty and you judge this as either risk or opportunity. There is a strategic imperative to “open up” to alternatives to how you undertake business or accelerate it.

For me risk or opportunity are the same side of the coin, you can’t gain one without a level of the other playing its part. A business “yin and yang”, the opposite but interconnected and often complementary forces to drive our business forward by applying business ecosystem thinking and design opens up new competitive forces to build into your strategic thinking.

Is the level of “fear” seemingly rising and are our business organizations equipped or not, to draw upon the many alternatives that technology, Gen AI, platforms, networks, collaboration and co-creation opportunities that are offered to manage and rethink new opportunity and risk?

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Providing the Building Blocks of the Ecosystem Business Model framework

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Providing the full building blocks of the Ecosystem Business Model

I share this outlined design frame here, clearly to advance Business Ecosystems and provide a framework that enables individuals, groups and (multiple) organizations to begin to organize their conversations into the building blocks to explain and build Ecosystem conversations.

Business ecosystems are complex and often chase down challenges that potentially offer levels of uniqueness and significant improvement on what is existing or known as the existing solutions within the market place but are highly complex in their nature.

In my recent post I provided an initial Ecosystem Business Model frame to introduce and build out a common language and then took that into nine building blocks to get to the point of validating the thinking behind this emerging concept to decide in a further evaluation in a structured way

Providing the full Ecosystem Business Model is the next step

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Breaking down complexity, introducing the Ecosystem Business Model frame

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Building the Ecosystem Business model is a paradigm shift

Building Business Ecosystems can be complex to build, let alone explain. I have been working on an evolving Ecosystem Business Model for some time.

So many people are unable to explain Business Ecosystems, especially to others and it holds its evolution back. Let me explain some of my thinking here

I visualized a starting point nearly all should be familiar with, of the Business Model Canvas, by Alexander Osterwalder, drawn from his PhD thesis, supervised by Yves Pigneur (2004), called a business model ontology.

This BMC become a phenomena to enable us to easily describe what building blocks need to be considered for building a business model. As a visual chart it enabled us all to build a picture. It allowed us to describe, design, challenge, invent, explain and eventually recognize where to pivot your business model.

That business model canvas tends to stay rooted (or designed) in the single entity in its intention and as Business Ecosystems involve multiple and diverse stakeholders it helps but, in my opinion, does not reflect the design needed for these Ecosystem models.

In my view “In today’s interconnected world, businesses are increasingly operating within complex ecosystems. Traditional business models often fail to capture the dynamics and interdependence of these ecosystems, leading to missed opportunities of significant competitive advantage and exposure to increased risks that others are recognizing changes and equally on the hunt for new Business Models”

We need to build an Ecosystem Business Model story

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