I am outlining in a short series a Comparison of a selected group of Industrial giants and how they are managing their Ecosystem building. This is coming out of the IIBE Lens methology developed. This post offers a brief summary of their positioning around Ecosystem management
Optionality and Volatility intentionally excluded– this will be covered seperately.
Industrial competition has shifted. Advantage is no longer defined by product portfolios, installed base, or even digital capability alone — it is increasingly determined by ecosystem completeness: the ability to design, attract, orchestrate, and scale a system that others choose to build within.
Using the Intelligent & Integrated Business Ecosystem (IIBE) Lens, this compares four industrial leaders — Siemens AG, Schneider Electric, ABB, and GE Vernova — to expose meaningful differences in how ecosystems are positioned, activated, and matured. This is not a framework explanation. It is an outcome-driven comparison of ecosystem reality.
The central question is simple:
Which of these firms has built an ecosystem that is truly fit for the next phase of industrial and energy-system competition?
How the IIBE Lens Is Applied (Outcomes Only)
This comparison focuses on observable ecosystem outcomes across five dimensions:
- Strategic Ecosystem Coherence – Is the ecosystem designed as a system, or assembled through partnerships?
- Platform Attraction Power – Do platforms act as magnets for customers, developers, and partners?
- Customer Pull & Adoption Friction – Does the ecosystem reduce complexity and accelerate value realisation?
- Maturity & Institutional Commitment – Are governance, incentives, and resources embedded or provisional?
- Market Fit – Does ecosystem design align with the structural needs of priority industries and energy markets?
Optionality (future choice) and Volatility (system behaviour under stress) are deliberately held back for a dedicated follow-on analysis.
Siemens AG: The Benchmark for Ecosystem Completeness
Position: The most systemically complete ecosystem in the group.
Siemens has moved furthest from viewing ecosystems as a growth lever and instead treats them as industrial operating systems. Its ecosystem logic spans automation, software, infrastructure, mobility, and energy, bound together by architectural intent rather than loose federation.
What stands out is Siemens’ ability to combine openness with control. Platforms such as Xcelerator are not marketplaces or product stacks; they are integration environments that enable partners and customers to co-create across full asset lifecycles.
For customers, this translates into lower orchestration burden. Siemens absorbs complexity that others push downstream, particularly through its digital twin narrative and lifecycle continuity.
Critically, ecosystem orchestration at Siemens is institutionalised — supported by governance, incentives, dedicated teams, and consistent executive signalling. This is not experimentation; it is embedded strategy.
IIBE Outcome: Siemens currently sets the benchmark for ecosystem fitness in complex, regulated, asset-heavy environments.
Schneider Electric: The Most Customer-Activated Ecosystem
Position: The strongest ecosystem for customer pull and rapid adoption.
Schneider Electric approaches ecosystems from a different angle. Where Siemens optimises for systemic depth, Schneider optimises for customer usability and speed — particularly in energy management, electrification, and sustainability-driven transformation.
EcoStruxure functions as a highly accessible, modular platform, attractive to system integrators, solution partners, and customers seeking fast time-to-value. The ecosystem is framed less as a grand system and more as a problem-solving environment.
Schneider excels at translating ecosystem participation into concrete outcomes: efficiency gains, compliance, resilience, and decarbonisation. This creates strong customer pull, even if architectural ambition is more constrained than Siemens’.
Ecosystem maturity is evident in partner enablement, go-to-market execution, and consistent messaging — though Schneider trades some cross-domain integration for clarity and execution speed.
IIBE Outcome: Schneider proves that ecosystem vitality is driven by customer pull, not ecosystem rhetoric.
ABB: Strong Assets, Incomplete Ecosystem Integration
Position: Ecosystem potential exceeds ecosystem integration.
ABB has world-class capabilities across electrification, automation, robotics, and motion. However, through the IIBE Lens, its ecosystem remains federated rather than orchestrated.
Ecosystem engagement is largely organised around business units and solution domains. This creates strong local ecosystems but limits cross-domain learning, scaling, and compounding value.
ABB’s platforms are technically credible but often perceived as bounded systems rather than generative environments. Customers engage for engineering excellence and reliability, but ecosystem participation tends to remain transactional.
The constraint is not capability or investment, but narrative and governance integration. Without a unifying ecosystem logic, ABB’s ecosystem assets struggle to reinforce each other.
IIBE Outcome: ABB has the components of a leading ecosystem, but not yet the orchestration discipline to unlock them.
GE Vernova: Purpose-Led, Ecosystem Still Forming
Position: Strategic intent is clear; ecosystem maturity is not.
GE Vernova’s ecosystem ambition is shaped by its role in the energy transition — grid modernisation, renewables, and large-scale infrastructure. However, ecosystem execution remains constrained by organisational separation, capital discipline, and project-led operating models.
Partnerships are visible, but they function more as aligned collaborations than as a coherent ecosystem system. Platform coherence is improving, yet remains fragmented across energy domains.
Customers engage GE Vernova primarily as a critical technology provider rather than as an ecosystem orchestrator. Ecosystem value is often implicit, not designed.
Recent restructuring has prioritised focus and performance, but at the cost of sustained ecosystem investment and dedicated orchestration capacity.
IIBE Outcome: GE Vernova is directionally aligned with ecosystem thinking, but remains early in ecosystem maturity.
What Really Differentiates Them
- Most complete ecosystem: Siemens AG
- Strongest customer pull: Schneider Electric
- Most under-leveraged assets: ABB
- Least mature ecosystem execution: GE Vernova
The decisive factor is not technology depth, partner count, or digital claims. It is ecosystem orchestration discipline and the ability to intentionally design and sustain a system that others rely on and see provide sustaining value.
What This Reveals About Ecosystem Advantage
- Ecosystem coherence beats ecosystem scale. Siemens and Schneider outperform by offering clear participation logic, not by maximising partners.
- Customer pull is the true activation force. Schneider shows that ecosystems grow fastest when value is immediate and adoption friction is low.
- Assets do not self-organise into ecosystems. ABB and GE Vernova demonstrate that without governance, narrative, and orchestration, ecosystem value remains latent.
The next phase of industrial competition will not be decided by who owns the best technologies — but by who orchestrates the most coherent, adoptable, and scalable ecosystems.
The different lenses are part of the IIBE blueprint that offers a diagnostic systematic approach to support organisations to design. operate, adapt and evolve through ecosystems, especially under changing market conditions.
The Client Solutions we offer provide a clear pathway for potential clients at every level of Ecosystem thinking and maturity from start-ups, through disruptors to todays knwon Ecosystem providers to deepen and evolve their Ecosystem thinking through focused application and advice.
Next in this series: Optionality and Volatility in Industrial Ecosystems: How Leaders Adapt and Compete, Optionality and Volatility examines ecosystem fitness under uncertainty and systemic shock. It is a critical component of lens analysis. It can radically alter how we look at Ecosystems, seeing threat and risks and what needs to be taken in action to avoid serious strategic consequences.
This is the third post in a short series on the value and benefits of understanding and compariing your Ecosystem competitive position through the IIBE lens
1st post: Looking Through the IIBE Lens: A New Perspective on Ecosystem Strategy
2nd post: Comparing Industrial Ecosystem Strategies Through the IIBE Lens
The 4th post, the final one in this short series, is all about Optionality and Volitatility in Industrial Ecosystems and how it changes how you view organizations.
Why not make the contact to discuss your intent and ambitions around Ecosystems to see if we can help