So many of us that build out theories, client advice or generally post insights have this need to reflect at the end of the year. Partly to take stock, partly to reset the path into the next year.
Well, this is my reflection and I am not unhappy with what it provided but it has made me so impatient for 2026 and all evolution I have planned for the Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem framework (IIBE)
2025 has been the year where twenty years of ecosystem and innovation work finally, I mean finally, crystallised into a single, named blueprint: the Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE).
What began as a long exploration of dynamic ecosystems, innovation systems and business models matured this year into a coherent operating architecture that can be put in front of executives as a practical way forward.
This closing post is both a personal look back and a marker of how the work has evolved: from sensing patterns, to building a framework, to launching the IIBE and beginning the harder journey of proof, simplification and client adoption.
So my year has been to “feed”ecosystem curiosity to explaining the integrated IIBE blueprint
So far the strongest illustrations of IIBE dynamics in my material today are still proto‑case and scenario‑based rather than fully documented client cases. They have been showing how sensing, learning, co‑creation, orchestration, and renewal would work in context, but as my October assessment explicitly notes, the need is for more short, vivid real‑world case studies to gain greater adoption and recognition
You have to recognize the roots of the IIBE go back many years, but the turning point into 2025 was the recognition that “ecosystem thinking” had outgrown loose metaphors and needed a true operating blueprint.
Through much of my 2023–2024, work and research fcused on dynamic ecosystems, composable innovation, and ecosystem business model readiness and these revealed three recurring realities: linear models are too rigid, most ecosystem frameworks are partial, and organizations are struggling to translate ecosystem intent into day‑to‑day decisions. We were in my mind, in need of a more integrated architecture,
Coming into 2025, the intent was explicit: to build and expose a fully integrated business ecosystem framework that joins strategy, innovation, operations, governance and intelligence into one dynamic system.
Posts in the first half of the year on interconnected business ecosystems, visual representations of the blueprint, and the need for a new ecosystem mindset were laying that groundwork—shaping language, testing structures, and refining the difference between “business as usual” and truly interconnected value creation.
Recognising the centrality of dynamic ecosystems
A key realisation in 2025 has been the central role of the Dynamic Ecosystem layer as the “orchestrator’s engine” of the whole system. This is more than a metaphor: it is the nervous system that senses weak signals, challenges assumptions, runs stress tests on strategies, and pushes organisations to re‑imagine how they combine capabilities with partners. This really becomes the building block of my 2026 work.
Writing about dynamic ecosystems throughout the year helped to sharpen a few non‑negotiables. Ecosystems must be non‑hierarchical and circular in how value flows. They must be inherently adaptive, learning‑driven and co‑creative rather than fixed pipelines. And they must recognise that the real unit of advantage is no longer the single firm, but the orchestrated network. This thinking sits at the heart of the IIBE and shaped nearly every major piece written in 2025.
The launch: making the IIBE visible
The visible inflection point came in September 2025 with the public launch of the Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem blueprint. Over that month, a series of fifteen posts deconstructed the IIBE from multiple angles: its evolution, rationale, core dynamics, layered architecture, and the Business Model Ecosystem with its 69 mapped components really building a “patchwork quilt” offering multiple combinations of what Ecosystems can offer.
The launch sequence followed a deliberate narrative arc: problem framing, core dynamics, structural decomposition, orchestration and intelligence, value‑shift to co‑creation, business model implications, and clear calls to action. This made the IIBE visible not just as another conceptual model, but as a complete operating system, identified formally as Blueprint ID: IIBE‑2025‑v1.0.. This really made it explicit and coherent.
One of the most important steps in this period was the explicit mapping of three integrated layers—Strategic, Operational and Cross‑cutting—and the recognition that they must work together rather than as stacked silos. The Business Model Ecosystem decomposition into 69 components gave practitioners something they could diagnose and design with, turning “ecosystem talk” into a structured set of design choices and readiness questions. Yes, it made it complex but Ecosystems are just that, complex because of what they combine and offer, a greater value and choices.
Clarifying what the IIBE actually offers
Through posts such as “What Is the IIBE Blueprint — and Why It Matters Now” and the executive explainer on my sister site, www.ecosystems4innovating.com, the offer behind the architecture became clearer. The IIBE is positioned as a practical blueprint for transforming siloed businesses into adaptive ecosystems by integrating internal capabilities with external networks into one orchestrated, dynamic system.
Five dynamics underpin this: sensing, learning, co‑creation, orchestration and renewal. Across the year, writing about these dynamics in different contexts—innovation portfolios, partner models, regional ecosystems—helped to move them from abstract labels into behaviours and capabilities leaders can recognise: faster sensing of change, structured learning loops, disciplined co‑creation, intentional orchestration and continuous renewal of strategy and relationships.
This also clarified the strategic payoff: faster value creation, resilience in disruption, new ecosystem‑scale business models, and a more regenerative, sustainable way of growing with others rather than at their expense.
A candid assessment: strengths and gaps
One of the most significant moments in 2025 was to pause, just weeks after launch, and publish an explicit assessment of the IIBE blueprint. That assessment surfaced three important strengths: the intellectual architecture is sound and comprehensive; the dual‑layered framework of vertical domains and horizontal dynamics is distinctive; and the positioning as a proprietary, practitioner‑driven methodology is strong.
Yet it also named critical gaps that cannot be ignored: a lack of proof points and case studies, a theory‑to‑practice gap around “Diagnose–Integrate–Orchestrate,” and missing implementation roadmaps and tools. The recommendation was blunt: stop adding conceptual layers and invest instead in proof, simplification, practical tools and community building, closing the gap between a powerful idea and a market‑ready system.
That self‑critique has been important personally. It shifted the work from “how do I fully express this framework?” to “how do I make this simple, provable and usable enough that executives and teams can adopt it with confidence?”.
Towards client solutions and progressive pathways
By December, the focus of the writing had clearly moved from architecture to application. It was the right time. The “Client Solutions for the Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE)” piece set out a commercial and engagement model built as a progressive pathway: low‑friction entry points, capability‑building progression, implementation support and ongoing advisory and intelligence renewal. The solution structure gives a very practical structure to all the work I have been building and framing into deliverables.
Each module is designed to be independent yet connected into a broader arc of ecosystem capability formation, allowing clients to enter based on current maturity, ambition and urgency. This approach is a direct response to the gaps highlighted in October: giving organisations clear ways to diagnose their position, run focused pilots, and then build out a more complete ecosystem operating model without demanding a grand, total transformation from day one.
In parallel, the writing consciously has started to segment the audience more clearly: strategy and transformation leaders, business unit and P&L owners, platform and technology leaders, ecosystem conveners and regional bodies, and advisors who can embed the IIBE in their own work. That sharper focus will matter in 2026, where relevance and specificity will be as important as conceptual completeness.
What 2025 has really changed
Looking back, 2025 has not just been about launching a new framework; it has been about reframing what “ecosystem work” can be. Instead of treating ecosystems as a side‑topic or a future trend, the IIBE positions ecosystem orchestration as a central strategic discipline for the 2020s—one that connects innovation, strategy, operations, technology and governance in a single, dynamic blueprint.
Personally, this year has also closed a loop: the long, sometimes messy accumulation of insights from innovation practice, ecosystem research and platform thinking has been distilled into a form that feels both intellectually honest and practically oriented. The work is not finished—in many ways it is only just beginning—but 2025 is the year where the IIBE moved from “idea in development” to “named, visible and ready to be tested in the world”
2025–2026 inflection: from V1 architecture to V2–V3 dynamics
Also 2025 also delivered something larger: a complete ontology and AI model specification that continiously is moving the IIBE from static blueprint (V1) into a dynamic intelligence and orchestration system (V2), with AI as the structural enabler of continuous sensing, propagation mapping and orchestration planning (V3). This is no longer just ecosystem architecture—it’s an operating system with formal semantics, dynamic principles and engines and a concrete path to AI‑human fusion. This is a challenge, needing a lot of thinking through recently.
So 2025 has really changed a lot for structuring a comprehensive Ecosystem
Looking back, 2025 has not just been about launching a new framework; it has been about reframing what and how “ecosystems work” and what they can be. Instead of treating ecosystems as a side‑topic or a future trend, the IIBE positions ecosystem orchestration as a central strategic discipline for the 2020s—one that connects innovation, strategy, operations, technology and governance in a single, dynamic blueprint.
2025 is the year where the IIBE moved from “idea in development and blueprint building” into a named, visible, ontologised, ready to be “rolled out” and further tested or validated as a living system in 2026
So my 2026 North Star: proving the dynamic engine
Looking into 2026, the work now has a clear guiding objective—a North Star: establishing the IIBE as a distinctive, validated, AI‑powered ecosystem operating system that consistently improves sensemaking, orchestration and outcomes in real ecosystems
Most importantly, achieving a deeper engagement and validation with interested parties recognizing the importance of ecosystems, though the solutions provided or will evolve from the work-on-hand.
The Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE) is real, version 1.0 is on the table, and the next chapter is about proving what it can do in V2 in early 2026, leading to V3 later in 2026.
So a Good New Year, to each and everyone of you.