A Statement of Ecosystem Intent – the CEO letter often missing

A Statement of Ecosystem Intent – the CEO letter that is often missing but highly essential to have as part of any ecosystem design thinking.

Ecosystems have become a really hot topic. The word “Ecosystem” is getting as much “air time” as the general use of the word “innovation” in business recently.

It generates buzz, it projects the impression you are looking to the future, managing your business in that progressive, outward way, that shareholders and your employees love to hear.

The shift taking place- Ecosystems are entering the lexicon of top management.

It does sound good to talk about “building our ecosystem” in every possible way. You need to ask though, has management actually sat down and defined the type of ecosystem it wants to design, participate in, or become part of? Or does this simply happen, a sort of drifting into, a grand experiment, not connecting all that is truly necessary for such a seismic move, stifling the real progressive sense?

Let’s take a different approach Continue reading

Making Transition through Innovation, Ecosystem and Sustainable Approaches

Today, we need to transition through ecosystem thinking and designs, as we recognize the future value and impact for businesses to grow, is through collaborations and co-creation. We need to have a new open architecture for undergoing this transformation.

Making Sustainability central to innovation capability building in a new ecosystem designed way connects the parts into the future design. Continue reading

Understanding Value Creation within Ecosystem Thinking

Value Creation is vital to know about. Where is it coming from? What is being put into place to nurture, develop and allow its creation to evolve and spread so that it can attract more understanding?

Within Ecosystem thinking, the more we open up our thinking and ideas, the more we can build from this. We attract others to work together and create new points of value that are mutually rewarding. That openness offers so much more value creation possibility, yet we don’t talk about it; we simply generalize it like a “buzz word.” We need to be explicit on our value creation capabilities.

When we begin applying our thinking to Ecosystem designs, knowing where and how your value creation is generated becomes vitally important.

So what is value creation? Continue reading

A case for change; thinking out the evolution of platforms and ecosystems

What we offer today needs a change in emphasis of thinking out the evolution of platforms, into ones that are designed for building out thriving business ecosystems for all to collaborate around and build together.

I argue today, we need to change our stories into ecosystem thinking ones.

We need to shift our platform rhetoric into a vastly different one, one based on building the Ecosystem story, well defined in its understanding that requires a very intense focus on what it means within Industry design and expected outcomes.

Over the past three or more years, I have been studying and researching platforms and ecosystems. I feel we are at an inflexion point of significant business change from embracing ecosystem principles in the business world.

The key message from my reflection was, at the time, two years ago, “we do need to change our story; it is simply not about platforms“. It is thinking for the design for ecosystems, into “ecosystem mobilization.

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Affordability versus Sustainability – a cause to be addressed

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

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. Continue reading

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

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

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.

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? Continue reading