My review of 2024 from a posting perspective has been a really positive one.
Taking my two primary posting sites of paul4innovating.com and ecosystems4innovating.com I wrote just over 100 posts, which always comes as a surprise in what it entails in time invested.
The split between sites was fairly even as I continue to increase my focus on building the building case for Ecosystems, in thinking and design.
In this reflective post I took a look back on why I moved from an “absolute” focus on innovations into innovation and business ecosystems.
Moving beyond Innovation into Business Ecosystems
For many years innovation has been my core, in consulting, coaching, advisory and mentoring but it simply, over time, became a restrictive spot to be.
Innovation inside the one company is (very) outdated and does not take account of the significant changes occurring in technology enablement or solving increasing complex challenges.
Far too many organizations are locked in this “doomed” world of diminishing returns from being self-possessed in their focused.
We need to build out from open innovation into ecosystem thinking and design.
First, stepping back taking open innovation beyond its original positioning which was a pivotal moment in innovation management.
“Open innovation is a term used to promote an Information Age mindset toward innovation that runs counter to the secrecy and silo mentality of traditional corporate research labs.] More recently, it is defined as “a distributed innovation process based on purposely managed knowledge flows across organizational boundaries. The boundaries between a firm and its environment have become more permeable; innovations can easily transfer inward and outward between firms and other firms and between firms and creative consumers, resulting in impacts at the level of the consumer, the firm, an industry, and society.[7]– Wikipedia abridged
For me, the emphasis needs to keep constantly move towards Business Ecosystems
Ecosystems foster collaboration and accelerate the dissemination of knowledge through the network effect, in fact, value creation increases with each actor in the ecosystem, which in turn nurtures the ecosystem as such.
James F. Moore originated the strategic planning concept of a business ecosystem. The basic definition comes from Jim Moore’s book, The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems and focused more on (at the time) the high tech industry studying the co-evolution in social and economic systems applying the concept of networks of organization coming together that provide mutual support and co-evolve contributions. It is based on the principle that organizations, as living organisms, are most successful when their development and behavior are aligned with their core purpose and values – what we call “social DNA’”
Evolving towards Ecosystems for innovation and business
This evolution towards Ecosystems attracted me increasingly from mid 2016 where I attempted to separate my thinking into innovation on one posting and ecosystems on another. That in all honesty has never worked, these fuse together constantly and for good reasons.
On my ecosystems4innovators.com site I have written nearly 250 posts since September 2016 but this has ramped up far more in the past 18 months of so as I began to propose my own frameworks in my understanding and studying ecosystems for a fair number of years
Where I stand today
Ecosystems for business have an absolute need to be integrated, they are heavily interconnected. This post of A New Way to Drive Value Through The Integrated Business Ecosystem Design provides handy visuals depicting the different ecosystems that make up (my) integrated business ecosystem framework.
I have spend time on measuring success, defining the different components, exploring and extending this out. I had a recent post showing some key developments in this thinking with reference posts, moving towards providing a compelling business ecosystem case
I sought out a AI generated view from Google NotebookNL research assistants discussing why Ecosystems are really different to consider, which I found encouraging and good, easy listening.
Recognizing the importance of Dynamic Ecosystems
The most exciting work has been on the importance of recognizing Dynamic Ecosystems. I believe these are a new core of organization design.
“At the heart of this interconnected business ecosystem framework lies the Dynamic Ecosystem layer, a core, a powerful engine, the nervous system designed to actively challenge assumptions, validate strategies, stress-test our adaptation and resilience capabilities, and provoke the re-imagination of our fundamental business models.
In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, complacency and rigid thinking can harm an organization’s long-term viability. The Dynamic Ecosystem layer serves as a contrarian force, a provocateur that continually questions our established norms and pushes us to explore alternative perspectives.“
So I close out this short summary on Why Business Ecosystems are highly valuable to think through and turn towards 2025 and my plans to support the evolving understanding of the value and importance of Ecosystems in business.
Turning to 2025.
The focus has to shift even more into engagement by building a blueprint and roll out a structured approach to thinking and designing on Business Innovation and Ecosystems.
In the work ahead for 2025.
In the pipeline are exploring sustainability for Ecosystem building, comparing Natural Ecosystems as well as looking at Neutral Ecosystems, from the AI Gen perspective, then building and extracting Innovation help and support more through Gen AI to aid acceleration, design and execution.
There is a real need of a harder assessment and re-looking at bringing in the Ecosystem Platform Management into a different perspective than our current platform focus, leading to building ecosystems, it should be ecosystem and networks drive platforms and their unique designs.
Resetting the Voice of any journey
The customer journey through ecosystems is providing a rolling out of thinking and updating. There is a need for a new Voice of the Customer, the Voice of Partners within any Ecosystem thinking and more importantly provide that “higher” level of the Voice of Ecosystems.
I will be continuing to look for new tools, methodologies and structured approaches to build on my recent work.
Ecosystem mapping, visual flows extending a minimum viable ecosystem (MVE), establishing heath and metrics, exploring decision trees and complex value webs are on the list to extend even furher from my initial investigations.
I am keen to extend out my interconnected implementation toolkit and structure in 2025. I have a whole host of approaches here to explore and extend through deeper engagements.
Of course, the integrated business ecosystem framework is very front and centre to business ecosystems. It drives the research and translation of all of the above to continue to build it out in recognition and business transformation.
The increasing shift to Ecosystem Coaching and Advising.
Most importantly I will be turning increasing towards Ecosystem Coaching, Advising and Mentoring to build on this engagement emphasis. The need to provide impact from Ecosystems becomes essential for passing through the different coaching stages as a big part of any transformation.
For me as a big part of this Ecosystem work is comprehension, reduce uncertainties and anxieties, to gain a greater confidence to experiment and draw others into a trusting, highly collaborative relationship of engagement, learning and managing diversity of opinions.
I keep motivated on Ecosystems for this need in delivering a higher purpose, providing the operating and management purpose and delivery to give this
2024 was a good year of Ecosystem discovery, progress and fulfillment, now I move into 2025, gearing up for greater engagement.
*amended on 03/12/2024