The selling of Business Ecosystems needs facilitation and realization
So often, you get the question, “What are the arguments for selling B2B business ecosystems?”
Then why would enterprises invest in such a significant change to their systems and structures? Where is the value and payback?
It should be recognized that selling B2B business ecosystems to enterprises can be a compelling proposition as it offers several potential benefits and value propositions. Here are some key top level arguments for why enterprises might invest in adopting a B2B business ecosystem approach:
Building Effective Business Governance has multiple challenges.
We must emphasise the importance of ecosystem governance, providing a comprehensive structure for designing a practical framework. The robustness and depth of Governance understanding make or break Business Ecosystems. Building a robust governance framework clarifies that managing business ecosystems is not for the faint-hearted or light-of-pocket in all the aspects that need to be considered.
Managing governance is challenging but essential if we recognize that business ecosystems offer immense potential for innovation, rapid scaling, and adaptability. Otherwise, Ecosystems can become expensive and often disruptive ventures. They need to be managed well.
Early research indicates that less than 15% of business ecosystems are sustainable in the long run, with the primary reason for failure lying in the governance model, according to MIT Sloan in How Business Ecosystems Rise and Often Fall, published in 2019.
We have made significant progress in the past few years due to a growing understanding of Governance needs across all parties and the appreciation of the real differences in thinking, designing, and operating in business ecosystems.
The growing recognition of the real power of ecosystems is in the diversity and knowledge sharing today. Also, the recognition that balancing collective interests, mitigating risks, enforcing compliance, and promoting long-term sustainability from kick-off.
The Dynamic Ecosystem within the Interconnected Business Ecosystems
Business Ecosystems are the growing force to galvanize change and build a more collaborative culture, where the partners’ diversity enables solutions to be solving more complex and challenging problems we seem to be facing today.
When thinking about and designing business ecosystems, you must recognize that different ecosystems contribute, evolve, and determine their part in a “bigger” scheme of things. Recognizing that innovation, business, dynamic, and enterprise ecosystems through the design to be interconnected has evolved into the Interconnected Business Ecosystem framework.
Below in this post, I have clarified where the Dynamic Ecosystem fits and its significant contribution, influence, and impact on the health, dynamism, and future solution orientation we strive for in any new solutions. The C-level pitch sums it up well.
I have written extensively about “the dynamics within a system,” especially an innovation one, arguing that adaptation and resilience are consequences of practising “dynamics.” I got caught up in the importance of studying and recommending the need tobuild dynamic capabilities. More recently, I have written about the critically crucial dynamic ecosystem that “sits” in the interconnected business ecosystems of innovation, business, dynamics, and enterprise.
We live in a world of interconnected Ecosystems. Businesses have been actively working in their own connected ecosystems to suit their own business needs. That needs to change. We need to open up our thinking to collaborative ecosystems.
Let’s briefly examine why and what I have been working on as my focus for some time—the need for interconnected business ecosystems. They are highly valuable and very relevant today in dealing with complexity. They are interlinked in different ecosystems to generate greater returns and resolve complexity and challenges that need co-creation and cooperation.
Connected Business Ecosystems for Impact and Value
After a short break, I have further solidified and deepened my approach to business ecosystem thinking and design through my “Hierarchy of business ecosystems” framework. This recent work has been focused on making this framework more robust, where integrating the suggested ecosystems of innovation, business, dynamic, and enterprise ecosystems brings out the value of such an overarching design.( see below for these as integrated value )
I provided a recent post “Returning to the Hierarchy of Business Ecosystems” where I summarized what the framework provided in its structured approach but also highlighted the area for improvement in its design value by offering a more robust, real and practical construct that offers components and bridging points for adoption. Some of these really important ones I will post upon as they need that “singled out focus” such as a more comprehensive Governance mechanisms, explicit integrations of dynamic adaptation and resilience, addressing interdependence and feedback loops and more quantitative metrics.
The Vision of the interconnected Business Ecosystem has this as its objectives.
“The Hierarchy of Business Ecosystem Needs presents a holistic approach to navigating the complexities of the modern business landscape. It emphasizes collaborative ecosystems as the key to unlocking untapped potential, driving sustained growth, and achieving collective prosperity.
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.
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:
Why should we consider establishing the Hierarchy of Business Ecosystem Needs within a single organization and collaboratively between Enterprises? It is recognized today that Ecosystem design and thinking provide demonstrable value and gain.
Building the Case for the Hierarchy of Business Ecosystem Needs:
In the rapidly evolving business landscape, we face constant change and recognise complexity is rapidly becoming the norm. The hierarchy of ecosystem needs emerged from my work and studies of ecosystems as a compelling and viable alternative for organizations to consider, manage their business, and look to extend their growth and potential through the ability to open up and create in different, highly collaborative ways.
This strategic paradigm dramatically shifts individual organizations towards sustained prosperity and fosters collaborative ecosystems that amplify collective impact, knowledge exchange, value and growth potential.
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.
There have been so many success stories, specifically in industry and the energy transition, that are so reliant on collaborations and co-creations, coming from essential ecosystem design and thinking. This is partly why I focus on the Energy Transition and Industrial Transformation for my innovation and ecosystem work.
Let us remind ourselves where those collaborations between different stakeholders deliver real change in radical, innovative solutions.
