Building Momentum in Business Ecosystems: Research Insights and Future Directions

Recognizing how connected Business Ecosystems need to be

During the August period, quieter for client engagement, it gave me the opportunity to really do some extensive research across the multiple topics around Business Ecosystems.

The research reminded me that in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the concept of Business Ecosystems is gaining increasing prominence but is still not well understood.

There is a real need for companies to remain competitive but they are seemingly striving to gain value reliant on old or existing tools and thinking.

The value of Business Ecosystems, in thinking and design for leveraging their growth is still hesitant for so many to investigate or explore. Building justification for making a change in thinking takes time and validation. This further research will yield more for convincing many still reluctant to “open up” to this change to recognize the need for this Ecosystem thinking to happen……..to them.

Simply, it is recognizing that these business ecosystems are becoming so crucial to resolve the complex challenges we are facing to day and that needs collaboration and co-creation but are complex in their structure and execution.

I have tried to summarize the key insights and areas of inquiry from this recent research in the following ways:

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A suggested sequence into the Interconnected Business Ecosystem framework

Putting sequence into the building of Interconnected Business Ecosystems

How would you sequence these within a interconnected business ecosystem environment?

As I continue to build out the Interconnected Business Ecosystem framework into my version 2 following the opening post Extending out the Interconnected Business Ecosystem as necessary. That opening post outlined each ecosystem in its specific concept approach, positioning and focus area that define the ecosystems and suggest the distinctiveness and value parameters this gives.

Initially I focused on framing this around four ecosystems: innovation, business, dynamic and enterprise as interdependent ecosystems. In the past few months I have been questioning this and believe the interplay was lacking in recognition that other ecosystems were coming into play. Here I deal with the sequencing.

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Why Business Ecosystems are highly valuable to think through.

Thinking through Business Ecosystems

Business ecosystems have grown in real importance for me to focus upon. Alone on this site I have written around 200 plus posts that relate to ecosystems and platforms since 2016 when I started separating my innovation thinking with this business ecosystem one.

Today, I have turned full circle, there is a need for merging these back but into innovation ecosystems for one and business ecosystems for the other, to explain different essential value parts..

Having an ecosystem-centric approach has growing advantages to navigate complexity and strive towards a new level of sustaining growth and impact.

Designing Ecosystems for collaboration, co-creation and extending your business out in radically different ways needs thinking through. It has become essential for the sustainable future tacking more complex and challenging issues

Let me provide some thoughts on this:

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Crossing the chasm with Partner Ecosystems to grow your business differently.

A relatively quick post, partly as Hannover Messe 2024 is in full flow and tuning into events like this, you realize where we are all being pushed to the future,. Although GenAI gets a lot of central billing in the talks and demonstrations, the future “buzz words” that tell much of the immediate future are wrapped up in the solutions being offered.

Hannover is seemingly emphasizing the power and need of Ecosystems, platforms, marketplaces, end-to-end processes, and sustainability to set up so as to gain value and impact from all the data and AI coming towards us. These events are always forward-looking; you get the impression there are some big, even mega ecosystems, being built, but the reluctance and convincing are still lagging from those attending, transformation is a very tough call.

I am not sure we have crossed that “tipping point” needed from the essential missing piece—customers of all sizes and shapes—being convinced that opening up to far more collaboration and co-creation is in their interest. They need to cross the chasm and start with, perhaps, extending their existing thinking on “Partner Ecosystems” and opening them up to real collaboration and co-creation sharing.

Crossing the chasm into a new way of doing business through Ecosystem thinking and design is upon us all.

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Who is best to facilitate the building out of a Business Partner Ecosystem?

Who should build a Business Partner Ecosystem?

Who orchestrates or facilitates this process of building out a Business Partner Ecosystem? Is it the lead company recognizing the value of building a more robust partner ecosystem or bringing in a specialized consultancy able to facilitate the significant amount of work this usually means?

It is not just about dedicated time but about experience, understanding, and recognition of all that can potentially change when exploiting ecosystems and being adaptive enough to respond.

There are typically two main approaches to orchestrating the process of building and managing a partner ecosystem:

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A journey in achieving a Dynamic Innovation Ecosystem

The value of Ecosystems cannot be understated. Be these “innovation ecosystems”, “business ecosystems” or “dynamic ecosystems.” They form a “hierarchy of ecosystem needs“, and that is where I will be going in the weeks ahead to explain this integrated and interconnected framing of ecosystems.

I have gotten relatively excited about this strand of thinking and ecosystem design as it has been a reasonably extensive period of research building this out to a validation point.

This is undoubtedly giving me a sense of purpose in exploring ecosystems extensively as it is the way we do need to go in extracting growth and value and give a more significant impact to all the complexity and challenges we are facing in today’s and our future world.

Let me recap for those recovering from their December and early January excesses.

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Recognizing the Value of Innovation Ecosystems

I keep being asked what Innovation Ecosystems are, why they seem slower in adoption than expected in the business environment, and how you can overcome reluctance and possible resistance to the need to change.

So, I thought I would list what the role of innovation ecosystems can provide and why they are essential and offer suggestions on gaining greater identification and adoption.

What is the role of innovation ecosystems?

Innovation ecosystems drive innovation, economic growth, and societal impact. They serve as collaborative platforms where individuals, organizations, and institutions from diverse backgrounds unite to share knowledge, resources, and ideas to bring new ideas to market and address pressing challenges.

They are rapidly becoming the backbone of a thriving knowledge economy where collaboration, knowledge exchange, and entrepreneurship drive progress in collectively coming together to tackle complex and complicated challenges that individual entities alone cannot attempt or fully resolve.

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Ready to add GenAI into your innovation ecosystem?

Innovation needs reinventing. There are new ways to capture, extract and deliver value. Adopting ecosystem thinking combined with Generative AI will augment, automate and rapidly scale innovation.

For me, ecosystem innovation and generative AI have arrived at that pivotal point to significantly influence future innovation design. It is where we need to question workflows and processes, as openness has become increasingly central to our thinking and development-building process.

I do believe the principles of design thinking, agile development, ecosystem thinking and design, coupled with AI integration. offer a radically exciting innovation ecosystem approach.

You must consider the following elements to make an ecosystem innovation stand out.

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Design Thinking needs a Human Touch in a World of Technology and AI generative thinking

Design thinking needs a human touch

Design Thinking is seen as the essential element that will combine with technology and AI in the future yet it is still the need for the human touch will still be essential. As we form more around ecosystem thinking and design, design thinking will be essential as the significant enabler to creative input.

There is a fascinating change by embracing Design Thinking principles differently in the future of innovation; organizations can foster a more profound culture of creativity, empathy, collaboration, and user-centricity, one we have often dreamed of in embracing design thinking but so often never achieving. This can lead to a radically different approach to developing innovative solutions, ones that need to consider the interplay between humans, technology, and generative AI.

It’s important to note, though, that while AI can provide valuable insights and automation in the design process, yet human creativity, critical thinking, and empathy remain essential.

The human touch is crucial for understanding complex emotions, cultural nuances, and ethical considerations. Critical thinking and empathy are essential within the design process that AI cannot fully capture. Exploring a number of these more human endeavours:

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Measuring the Successful Value of the Integrated Framework for Innovation Ecosystems

The significant value and success of the Integrated Framework for Innovation Ecosystems needs to be constantly tracked and measured.

Measuring the Multifaceted Impact is essential and radically different from how we usually approach measuring and collecting metrics.

As I previously mentioned in a recent post, “The Dynamics of Being Connected for Innovation Ecosystems.”this draws out the multifaceted approach. In the four key components, firstly, value creation needs to extend beyond (just) financial metrics; it should include social and environmental impacts in the future. Secondly, the value of knowledge transfer is all about accelerated innovation learning and seeking diverse experiences and expertise to optimize this from the network exchanges and discovery involved. Thirdly, Co-creation should constantly be looking for novelty or originality in impact, searching to continually improve customer experience and satisfaction by adding customer benefits and ways and means to improve market positioning. Fourthly, looking to assess competitive positions across the ecosystem from the partnership gives a diversity of viewpoints of opportunity to alternative market access to give a broader impact or range of options for competitive strategies.

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