Ecosystems and platforms are the present way to build your business or so we are advised. Yet there is ahead of us potentially the evolving way we take the Metaverse, this might be on the future horizon to take ecosystem thinking into a new direction.

Let’s see will metaverses take our present ecosystem thinking beyond? A metaverse is all the connections between the financial, virtual, and physical worlds that are becoming increasingly linked.

In many ways, the metaverse will combine all aspects of life in one place and become far more of our future platforms. There are commonalities between existing language and practice and the metaverse can extend this out.

For instance in reality, virtually, immersive, in marketplace offerings, in building a stronger blockchain element, having a greater social or customer participation. Marketplaces can decentralize even further what we have, we can interact differently, having more options to stimulate or be creative, and we will continue to build out interoperability and accessibility.

All of this is a “promise yet to come” but not so far away not to consider where the Metaverse might take ecosystem and platform practice into our present thinking.

Stepping back from the promise of what might yet come

Getting back to today’s business world, there is a certain reality we must face.

Yet for so many of today’s businesses, they are not even on the first base in exploring ecosystems and platforms and what these different business model opportunities will bring them.

How many businesses have even begun to consider how ecosystems can be managed in any established lifecycle thinking. The classic launch, scale, evolve and mature if they have not made the initial investments?

Let me begin by taking the two of these- launch and scale need resolution today for all businesses. Evolve and maturity comes later.

Launch

Knowing which ecosystems and platforms deliver, getting these into the market for offerings and introduction to customers or users and working through the viability and changes this ecosystem thinking means to a business proposition. It is a big deal and the sooner you experiment, the sooner an organization can become comfortable in its new suit of clothes!

Scale

By getting a growing understanding, the organization can expand its thinking, be comfortable with multiple platforms, reorganise its business to reflect different collaborations and business concepts and align its organization behind these. The scaling goes into different operating models and growth and impacts understanding and profitability radically different from today’s “traditional” models

Marshall Van Alstyne who is closely associated with MIT and one of the leading experts in network business models, put how we simply should understand platforms; “products have features, platforms have communities” which means a radical opening up to a very different level of cooperation and shared value.

Let’s take openness first

Technology to really work needs to be open and shared. Openness means significant collaboration, information and knowledge sharing.

Platforms give the real possibilities to achieving a more open architecture, achieving increasing interoperability where systems and technologies must work together and enable ease of exchange.

Digital transformation is a frontrunner in building a more open architecture. If you have not started your digital transformation journey yet, and many have not, then leapfrogging onto a platform might bring you back “up to speed.”

The more you look to being open the more you actually are receptive to this ecosystem thinking. Products, processes, and markets are getting more complex. Embracing ecosystem thinking means being open and putting your digital technology to better use, on your behalf.

We do have many challenges with openness when many organizations still chose to be constrained, even in sharing within the organization. The flow of information needs to break down existing barriers and silos.

The interactions within the company, across suppliers, and partners require a platform and ecosystem approach. We can’t remove obstacles without technology working effectively within these and on these platforms and ecosystems as our thinking and design.

Then we have shared value

It is so hard to let go, to trust others when you have spent your life being told you are in charge, you will be judged by your results.

Where do you start to reassess what shared value might possibly provide you in additional value?

Our customers today are offering the catalyst of this additional value. It is the consistent social change we are undertaking is needing this shared value to be assessed.

Today’s scalable business models are bringing out the societal benefits. For example decarbonizing your business, offering more sustainable products, providing recyclable solutions, adjusting to the effects of climate change, showing a more equitable balance within the organization and being open to how diversity and crisis management are handled and lastly, being simply honest when you are making mistakes.

There is this need to account for shared value.

How the environment, the customer’s journey and your partner relationships all build the ecosystem building blocks. Today treating societal challenges as business opportunities that give “equitable” balance and shared dialogue is a compelling place to explore.

It is through ecosystems you gain this “collective impact”, this shared understanding of complexity in problems that a collective approach can tackle and perhaps break down the issues into more manageable and valuable solutions.

It is the thinking in ecosystem ways to find common agendas, shared measurement and success understanding, in mutually reinforcing activities that complement, reinforce and extend what we know today, into what we can do tomorrow with this different collaborative thinking.

The art of shared value is communicating it. Building trust and collaboration takes time and is often delicate, fragile and needs compromise.

The openness and shared value need a different digital backbone

This openness and shared value come from ecosystem and platform thinking and experimenting. To evolve, you need to explore and experiment. You need to undo much of the past engrained thinking and behaviours and that, alone, is a huge effort.

To begin you need to recognize persistence, listen deeply to others, build trust in every part of your ecosystem and understand what the efforts this requires will ultimately, yield a better result.

But nothing changes unless you are prepared to change.

Thinking about all those shared value places, the value of being open is as big an investment justification as anything you have ever undertaken so far. It requires a very different design for your organization, processes, adoption of digital technology and business principles. It can be scary but is becoming necessary before it is forced on you.

Yet this is the very journey of recognizing that sustaining your business needs some radically different thinking.

Knowing your business ecosystem strategy

BCG, the consulting company, produced a great piece of work “What is your business ecosystem strategy?” which I think is a very valuable document that takes you through business ecosystem engagement.

I liked the part and especially relevant here in this concluding part of my post “how can we identify viable ecosystem opportunities?”

They state “every successful ecosystem is based on a compelling value proposition (or should be)- it solves a concrete business problem.

This is where, in my opinion, so many ecosystems and platforms fail to address.

Recognizing friction points

BCG suggests you look at “friction points” such as fragmented demand, fragmented supply, matching problems (of the two sides of the market), lack of trust, lack of supplier coordination and the lack of co-innovation.

It is in these “points of friction” lie different value propositions. Then see if ecosystems and platforms can be part of the business design answer.

Understanding ecosystem and platform designs

Ecosystem thinking and knowing the place, value and needs for converting your business to a platform driven one, does need carefully working through.

If you need some help, then I am more than happy to offer up some thoughts as I have focused on ecosystem thinking for some years, still learning but willing to share my experiences and knowledge.