Ecosystems will change the nature of business activities. Here are four of these but they need the beating heart of Governance to be pulsing through them by taking an evolving, living dynamic governance approach.

Ecosystems can lead to four distinct value-adding opportunities

• Ecosystems will have the potential to expand capabilities and enable experiences beyond anything possible today in the present world that most of our business organizations operate in; ones that are operating in their own ‘disconnected’ world, internally focused, constrained by limited technology connection and resources.
• Ecosystems open up the world. They connect it for richer access to diversity and different sets of discoveries not possible within one organization’s current capabilities or capacities. It is highly collaborative and interactive.
• It is by this very nature of opening up and interacting building a growing interdependence in relationships, that is driving the new innovation potential. As one is looking to create and explore new business value by willing collaborators acting together, that offers potential for outcomes to be greater than the sum of the individual parts.
• As our world becomes more complex, ecosystems offer ways to coalesce around those sorts of growing, seemingly complicated challenges, that bring together within the ecosystem community the potential to build, solve, share and exchange goals and concepts that help solve these complexities,  achieved in highly collaborative ways.

One of the most critical aspects of a thriving ecosystem comes from recognizing that Governance needs to be highly dynamic, constantly evolving as the inner heart of a good Ecosystem.

Distinctive Governance Challenges that keep evolving.

Governance is always essential in any Ecosystem or Network of Collaborators. It should NEVER be deemed as static, written when the Ecosystem is formed and left in place. It must be central and encouraged to be highly dynamic and constantly core to keeping the Ecosystem healthy and thriving.

It requires the driving forces of value creation and the recognition that growth and sustainability are part of its foundation

It provides the rules, mechanisms and framing for all the partners to sign on to and use as (one of) the foundation documents, to refer to on a constant basis, as issues arise and need some level of resolution.

Yet in designing the governance within ecosystems you do need to reflect on a number of issues that can arise in evolving environments:

Governance needs to constantly “account” for change. Here is a handy reference or reflection of its capacity to deliver:

+ Here you need to establish a relational, institutional and coordination set of strategic and operational approaches. The “living” document needs to reflect on the constant reshaping of the ecosystem as it evolves and recognize that this is a constantly evolving design.

+ It needs to articulate the influencing and coordinating mechanisms, their different levels and the protocols and procedures to resolve any disputes or pathway directions all would need to follow and adhere to.

+ It needs to determine the boundary conditions and if, and when, these change, which they are most likely to, there is a mechanism in place to recognize this and determine any new scope, direction or design to be accepted going forward.

+ A governance document needs to have built into it sufficient commonality, and be clear in its spirit of amiability to coordination and decision-making.

+ It needs to determine the critical driving forces but equally, reflect on the different catalyzing forces in tensions and design that individual members will attempt to impose, so there needs a resolution method to be able to go back and refer to, so as to adjust and adapt as more insight and design evolves. Managing the dynamic tensions carefully can result in significant breakthroughs in thinking and design solutions.

+ There will be very different cognitive frames constantly occurring, as we all see something more unknown than known in our own ways of thinking and experiences. The Governance mechanism should attempt to reflect this variance but have the controls to recognize and draw those increasingly into one view, vision and mission.

+ What you start with inevitably does not stand the test of time, certainly when you are in a creative, innovative, pioneering environment. Checking constantly builds the changing view, allowing options to reflect this in parts of the vision and mission, so all those involved have an understanding that this is a “living, breathing evolution”

+ All ecosystems evolve or will eventually die. The ability to design in some constantly proactively shaping, steering and leveraging mechanisms helps. How this is handled, communicated and discussed becomes a critical ‘living force’ to construct.

+ Lastly, the whole need to address inertia or free-riders does need carefully designed into the document. Those that cannot support creation have a lesser place in any ecosystem. They cannot or should not stop evolution. Those not contributing need to recognize the consequences of ecosystem thinking of natural selection, they need to have a certain fitness, robustness, and resilience to be valued. Otherwise, what they offer has no future value and they need to leave for the health of all still willing to the evolving nature of Ecosystems.

Never rest on Governance being a static document or set of initial principles, it can be the very catalyst and promotor of a living, dynamic ecosystem as it “promotes and nurtures” change.