Introduction: Innovation ecosystems have emerged as powerful catalysts for driving transformative change and fostering collaborative solutions in today’s complex and interconnected business landscape.
As organizations open up their thinking and embrace ecosystem approaches, they experience a profound shift in perspective, recognizing the value of diverse partnerships and the need for new management models.
I have written about the value of innovation ecosystems in thinking and design. Over a series of posts, this has built up different arguments or points of value.
Here I am attempting to summarize my thinking today.
I have put them into two parts, both shared here; each highlights a different emphasis on the value of innovation ecosystems but has several cross-over points, seen in different ways.
I wrote a four part series on cross-sector innovation ecosystems in April and I felt it was worth summarizing these into one, so I engaged my new office partner, ChatGPT to deliver this in a series of summaries. I can’t argue with these and decided to post these as a valuable initial referencing point on a growing area of organization need, in cross.-sector collaborations innovation ecosystem thinking.
The four-part series on cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations emphasizes the importance of collaboration in tackling complex challenges. The series discusses the skills, tools, and processes required for successful cross-sector collaborations, including interdisciplinary thinking, co-creation processes, project management, cultural competence, intellectual property management, and data analytics and visualization tools.
I struggle increasingly with individual energy organizations’ pledges to move their solutions towards a carbon-neutral future. The mixture of reports, initiatives, and viewpoints all move towards the transformation of the energy system, but they all admit or fail to address TWO crucial aspects.
Firstly the limited time we have to make such a transition in their offerings of new and different imaginative ways to change the current dynamics within our energy systems. Secondly, how each organization alone cannot achieve it with limited or no alternative suggestions to overcome this “constraint”. Well, this post is about one alternative, well worth considering.
One area of potential to bridge is the collaborations at the multiple firm levels. There is a weakness that deprives the ecosystem of a greater “collective action and innovation” to achieve a more accelerated pathway to the Energy Transition.
The Energy Transition has a rich network of complimentary ecosystems, all keeping the change moving at a ‘certain’ level of momentum, but is it good enough? I don’t think so.
The sheer number of Energy companies working on solutions within the Energy Transition is vast, varied and geographically spread. Each is struggling to get out of their (self-made) islands of knowledge to grow their business value through mostly individual innovation solutions.
We then have an Ecosystem of Governments and intergovernmental organizations providing policy suggestions and directions, offering sources of analysis, central data collection and interpretation along with proving reference and exchange points and forums. Then you have general and highly specialised Consulting firms, and investing institutions that are all constantly providing insights and supporting solutions.
We need to find new ways of collaborating and that means applying ecosystem thinking and platform solutions.
This is the fourth and final post discussing cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations. It is primarily dealing with the benefits of collaboration and bringing up to a ‘given point’ a compelling value proposition for potential collaborators in understanding the basic building blocks to consider, for achieving the engagement outcomes required.
Within the series of four posts, I have been emphasising that cross-sector collaborations are becoming essential to our future in tackling highly complex challenging issues that need collaborative resolution, the necessary parts need connecting.
Yet to get to these cross-sector collaborations you do need to take a very considered holistic view of what is needed in any collaboration, let alone ane cutting across sectors to generate a successful outcome. All the elements of skills, processes, tools, capabilities and behaviours are important in supporting an effective collaboration across sectors that might need to be involved.
In a series exploring cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations, this is the third post discussing different aspects and the approach to this that needs to be taken as my suggested starting point.
All the elements of skills, processes, tools, capabilities and behaviours are important in supporting an effective collaboration across sectors that might need to be involved.
Clarifying the design and common points is essential
This month I am completing a series on cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations. This is the second post that I am sharing here on my dedicated ecosystem thinking site and also through my paul4innovating posting site, which has different audiences to discuss this with.
For me, cross-sector collaborations are becoming essential to our future in tackling highly complex challenging issues that need collaborative resolution
Cross-sector innovation ecosystem collaborations do have real differences and I am to draw these out and my aim is to draw these out in this series.
Collaborations form the essence of discovery, relationships, innovation and new knowledge exchange.
As we move increasingly towards more open innovation hubs and increased ecosystem management the recognition is that many of the challenges and problems have not just become too complex to tackle alone, or even in a single industry but require cross-sector innovation (ecosystem designed) collaboration (CSIC) in consortia-developed approaches.
Sharing in collaborative arrangements enables the potential for improved operational productivity, and shared application development, tapping into a wider ongoing customer engagement and skill enhancements for all involved to gain from.
When you begin to evaluate cross-sector collaborations, the potential in building out initiatives that can only be achieved with a diversity of partners, different industry entities and drawing in the varied business networks get recognized.
For me, cross-sector collaborations are becoming essential to our future in tackling highly complex challenging issues that need well-organized and coordinated collaborative resolution
Future connected industry ecosystems will be highly collaborative
Seizing breaking opportunities, dealing with disruptions, and delivering on more demanding customer needs are raising the complexity of managing today in our business environments.
The growing recognition is the need to build flexible ecosystems; of partners where access to a diverse on-demand set of talent, knowledge, expertise, resources and capabilities needs a broad approach in today’s world to meet these complex challenges they seem to multiply daily.
In thinking and design, ecosystems offer a different growth path and stability than the previous “go it alone”. Engagements with partners can offer shared data, new, fresh insights, the ability to share costs, shared operation experiences, and expertise to help build new approaches to more ‘connected’ collaborative innovation.
Ecosystems – the need to be re-stated for Business
What are the significant differences between Natural and Business Ecosystems? I wanted to look at this and make some observations and comparisons. Firstly what we seem to get wrong in many labelling of business ecosystems, where sustainability fits, and then attempting to show apparent differences between Natural and Business Ecosystems needs a greater appreciation of differences.
We label far toomuch as Business Ecosystems.
Applying the label of “Ecosystems” to everything degrades the understanding of its true intent. Ecosystems need to be appreciated as vital and recognized as radically different in how they function and operate.
We call something an “ecosystem, ” which simply provides a rubber stamp of being politically correct, showing the day’s currency, and trying to represent what this means provides additional value or impact. Ecosystem thinking and design are fundamental challenges to how existing organizations go about their business.
Many businesses are claiming “ecosystem” but are, in fact, extending their present, established open innovation activities and placing a greater emphasis on open networking to seek out diverse ideas. This extension alone is not new Ecosystem thinking or design; it is existing thinking.
Building blocks towards Ecosystem thinking and designing
Part-way through 2022, I drew up a list of my focal points in researching, stimulating my thinking and finding different validation points on my Ecosystem thinking and design approaches. In early January this year, I took a stop, more a reflective period in these past months, to deepen down even further my knowledge of Ecosystem thinking and design. I aim to achieve, even advancing, Ecosystem understanding for those interested to learn and seeking advice through direct engagements.
My main focus on Ecosystems comes from the innovation perspective. How can we finally combine all the different parts of the Innovation system into one, fully connected up and achieve a far more open design where contributors, both inside and outside organizations, can contribute as it is the diversity of experience needed today to give fresh value and impact on complex and challenging issues, We need that discovery to commercialization fully connected up to be leveraged fully in all the diversity of contributions.
Innovation in its challenges and problems has become more complex and challenging, both in solutions offered and in working out all the connected parts to provide products or services that are superior to the existing ones. The need to provide that essential “dynamic” of having customer engagement in their data, a growing network of connected partners providing their input, their exploring and experimenting so the inventor can learn and seek to improve the product or service accordingly.
