Once in a while you should stop and look back. I have been very focused on justifying Business Ecosystems by providing frameworks, mechanisms or attempting to demystify them with suggested analytical or practical proposals.
I have been grouping my articles covered over two sites of paul4innovating.com and ecosytems4innovating.com. Why two sites? Well I am trying to “hold myself”to focusing on thought leadership and conceptual development on the paul4innovation.com site and providing more the implementation guideline and suggested methodologies on the ecosystems4innovating.com.
Is it working? I’m not sure as the two sites tend to fuse into each other and the distinctive points of differentiating the two is not the way it should be, lets put it down to a “work in progress”
So what has occupied my thinking ad research in this last eight months or so?
The Deep Dive and Audited Results- yes audited!
I went to medium.com to pull the different content together and synthesis the key aspects. It partly surprised me in all it “provided”but also confirmed the different aspects of business ecosystems I needs to explore and explain.
After the pause for reflection, a greater emphasis to move from providing the building blocks, there is a time to go build! “Implementation” becomes the mantra for the foreseeable future. The “how to implement” and provide the tools to do the job.
So what have I been “rattling on” about in these past eight or more months?
# The primary focus has been on my core concepts and frameworks of business ecosystems.
The Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem offers the framework and mechanisms to unlock value. These components and building blocks outlined do offer an integrated ecosystem to follow
The ability to build an Ecosystem Business Model becomes essential. I have attempted to break down its complexity, provides the foundation elements for constructing a business ecosystem that offers a cohesive, well evaluated structured approach. It brings out your uniqueness to build distinctive solutions as all business ecosystems should be unique in design and their value proposition
Dynamic Ecosystems are the operating core of business ecosystems. It is their dynamic elements that provides agility and organizational resilience as the essential balance. We need an adaptive mindset as change becomes the constant dynamic we need to build into our approach to today’s evolving and challenging landscape
Innovation Ecosystems are where we build the dynamism and most of my view has been the need to recognize the current stagnation and limited thinking that has pervaded innovation. We have been trapped in existing thinking and out of date designs to manage innovation and we need to recognize this
The solution for me to change how we undertake innovation is to consider a different, more connected-up framework. I have proposed the Composable Innovation Framework. This brings innovation planning, tracking, collaborating and coordinating into this century as the technology platform forms the backbone of the integrated approach
Then we have the prevailing influences that are shaping Business Ecosystems
Emerging Technologies in its many forms has had the most influence on shaping the design of ecosystems. There continues to grow a reciprocal relationship between different technology and the formation of unique ecosystems. When you add in the different technologies of AI and Machine Learning, Blockchain and Decentralize Models, Digital Twins and Simulations with Edge Computing and IoT you have a “massive” potential for radical change. It is the unique power of understanding how you combine these for creating entirely new ecosystems structure and dynamics
We also have to consider the “interplay and connected mindsets“that is constantly needed in managing Ecosystems. They are constant and dynamic. We need to seek and build adaptive and evolving mindsets, stepping away from conventional models to having the ecosystem mindset is radical, we need to change and practice leadership and operating differently than in the past. We have to think transformation, what is confronting up and what we need to (radically) change.
I looked at the essential need to consider different ecosystems. No one ecosystem can fit all, it is made up of a interconnected, integrate design. We need to recognize there are interconnected parts each operating and contributing differently in Entrepreneurial, Start-Up, Innovation, Business, Dynamic, Enterprise and Enterprise-to-Enterprise. It is these that make up the integrated ecosystem process.
I feel the Entrepreneurial and Start-up Ecosystem needs to be separated out from being treated as preludes to innovation. Recognizing these have highly distinctive activities within often a contained environment to manage risk and opportunity provides greater scope and encouragement to explore edges and evolving thinking. Today we wrap these up as “start-up hubs” or “accelerator centers” The argue for separation or integration dissipates if you treat these as more distinctive.
Recognition that we do need to look through different lenses, open ourselves up to broader Open innovations as collaborative strategies bring confidence and lead to deepening understanding of how ecosystems can work. These go beyond supply chain agreements into multiple opportunities across the organization. Conventional, siloed thinking, needs to be broken down across entire organizations.
We have to break out different needs in how we scope ecosystems. We have to bring in the Mid-sized organizations and give them practical application and benefits of ecosystems so they can forge independence and contribution in distinctive ways to larger, more “orchestrated” ecosystems.
Then we do need to recognize the distinctiveness of Partner Ecosystems. It is partnerships that when combined give distinct value of ecosystems. Recognizing partner ecosystems can address specific industry or social challenges
Natural Ecosystems do have much to offer Business Ecosystems and I find it valuable to spend time investigating these commonalities and sometimes recognizing greater comparisons, they stimulate approaches and methodologies.
Governance and Orchestration is essential. I have been working on different frameworks and approaches for this as it is so critical to success or failure. The failure recognition needs more work
Each of these topics or focus areas recognize the complexities of Business Ecosystems, they each contribute to the emerging Blueprint that can be designed into a specific business ecosystem approach, tailored to each unique challenge or need. Yes, ecosystems are complex, adaptive and highly dynamic and that is why I consistently emphasize the interconnected and integrated needs as so much is interdependent
So the many tools, frameworks that have been emerging form my work form the way forward, it will be interesting where the next eight to nine months takes me. I have a growing set of quantitative assessment methods, working on failure analysis and need to bring in three specific aspects.
The need for recognizing differences in global/ regional variations where structures, culture and governance will show differences. We have to buid more regulatory considerations and how they so often impact ecosystem formation and operation. Thirdly the whole sustainability integration has the need for deeper alignment with environment and sustainability issues. I need to bring these out more within my integrated thinking
Where I get often a real “nudge” is on content formats. My comfortable space is writing content but I need to build out more visualization tools, assessment diagnostics, practitioners feedback on their direct insights and continue to build on comparative business case studies
Finally I undertook a fairly extensive audit of my work in the last two months
A number of positioning challenges came out. My positioning or balance on 1) Abstract vs Measurable, moving conceptual models into more quantifiable metrics, 2) A sense of Static vs Dynamic where stable structures need to give way to evolving systems, 3) the Theoretical vs Visual where text-heavy explanations need corresponding visual representations and finally 4) moving Technology- adjacencies vs Technology-integrated needs to switch from technology discussed as an external force to its (rightful) position as a foundational element needs greater recognition.
Each of these is already being picked up upon, recent posts on technology for example, the re-emphasis of the application of dynamics within my own work by a tighter integration of thinking and the biggest “switch” of all, moving towards implementation and all that needs to have a comprehensive and measurable approach
The different audits all proposed a (slightly) different focus on my web sites and how they should separate out. These were “healthy debates. Not only do I have the principle two of paul4innovating.com and ecosystem4innovating.com my core site of agilityinnovation.com is the “the central advisory point to integrate and apply ecosystem and innovation knowledge from a commercialization perspective”.
Concluding and Moving Forward
The concluding remarks of the audits undertaken (multiple) “based on the evaluation and subsequent discussions, you are not far off from the goal of building an integrated ecosystem knowledge architecture.
I often feel my own “depth of relating and pursuit” seems to not take me towards achieving this goal of offering an integrated ecosystem knowledge architecture but showing me how really hard articulating and demonstrating Business Ecosystems is, simply because of the complexities that are so interconnected.
The cry “onward and upward” comes to mind.
I did not link these to any relevant articles, too many but just put the highlighted word into the search box on each site and hopefully you find what you are looking for or interested in. Let me know if you did not.