I continue to read one report after another concerning the latest state of innovation play. These seem always to be on a repeat button and this does frustrate me. It is like a record stuck at the end unable to be switched off, constantly repeating hopefully there will be some magic intervention. With a record at the end you simple switch it off or lift the “needle” to solve the problem. Let’s do that with simply “innovation”.
Why can’t we move on from talking “just” innovation. We should be highly focused on innovation ecosystems and where they fit with integrated, interconnected business ecosystems. We need to make the connection for todays world.
So let me offer up the compelling case of putting that tired old record about innovation not working finally away and redirecting you to the equivalent of spotify as a Ecosystem solution. Just a typical example- the “excitement” of the 29th PwC Global CEO Survey stating only 50% view innovation as a critical component of their overall business strategy. Well of course innovation is dead, it is seen through the wrong lens.
Innovation needs to be re-invented. The search for more connected higher value work and greater sustaining, focused work is needed today, that is what CEO’s demand. Entire workflows to cover ideation, imagination, creativity, discovery, collaboration and execution are needed. Please abandon legacy thinking that past innovation tools and frameworks are fit for purpose today.
A connected solution that gives you access to millions of ideas, established on a platform of connectivity that is accessable and can bring together different strands of concepts into your required personalisation story- offering a interconnected solution that has innovation at its heart.
The Obsolescence Crisis: Why Stand-Alone Innovation Is Failing
In my work it has been revealing for some years an uncomfortable truth: traditional innovation disciplines—even when practicing “open innovation”—are fundamentally mismatched to today’s reality. They’re operating with 20th-century assumptions in a 21st-century interconnected world. The gap isn’t incremental; it’s structural.
The evidence of failure is everywhere:
- Organizations multiply innovation initiatives yet integration lags
- AI, digital, sustainability, and partnership programs compete rather than compound
- Collaboration remains transactional, not reciprocal
- Pilot programs stay trapped in “pilot mode”
- Complex challenges like energy transformation, sustainable agriculture, and industrial decarbonization remain fragmented across isolated knowledge islands
The traditional innovation discipline treats innovation as something an organization does. But the connected future demands we recognize innovation as something that emerges from networks of interdependent actors. This isn’t semantic—it’s ontological.
Why Innovation Ecosystems Must Be the Foundation (Not an Add-On)
The compelling argument has three dimensions:
1. Complexity Has Outpaced Organizational Capacity
The challenges facing organizations today—climate transformation, industrial metaverse integration, circular economy transitions, AI-augmented operations—cannot be solved by any single entity, regardless of resources. These require:
- High levels of knowledge exchange across traditional boundaries
- Sharing of expensive R&D investments and experimental risk
- Transparent, collaborative discovery processes
- Simultaneous learning and experimentation at scale
When complexity exceeds individual capacity, ecosystems shift from optional to essential. Yet innovation as a discipline still designs for containment rather than connection.
2. Value Creation Logic Has Fundamentally Changed
The competitive unit is no longer the enterprise—it’s the ecosystem it can orchestrate. Traditional innovation disciplines optimize for:
- Internal idea generation
- Controlled IP development
- Linear stage-gate processes
- Organizational boundaries as value capture mechanisms
But value in connected systems comes from:
- Co-evolution across network participants
- Synergistic resource combinations that exceed sum-of-parts
- Emergence of solutions impossible in isolation
- Network-level capacity that transcends any single player
I have been working on the delivery of a Ecosystem framework, the IIBE framework to build fresh capability that I believe captures this brilliantly: “Advantage now depends less on control and more on the ability to connect, integrate, and adapt at speed.” Organizations today need a very explicit Ecosystem Business Model
3. Innovation Speed Requires Ecosystem Velocity
In dynamic ecosystems, learning accelerates, knowledge diffuses faster, and market opportunities can be captured through diverse channels simultaneously. A single organization moving quickly is still slower than a well-orchestrated network moving together. The math is inexorable: ecosystem velocity > organizational velocity, always. Ecosystems can capture scope, speed and scale.
Why Business Ecosystem Integration Is Not Optional
Here’s the fresh perspective: Innovation ecosystems without business ecosystem integration are structurally unstable. They’re beautiful in theory but fail in practice because:
Missing the “How” of Value Capture
Innovation ecosystems excel at value creation—generating novel solutions through diverse collaboration. But they often struggle with value capture and sustainability because they lack:
- Governance structures for equitable benefit sharing
- Clear mechanisms for scaling from prototype to market
- Aligned business models across participants
- Sustainable revenue and investment flows
Business ecosystems provide the architecture for:
- Positioning and market adoption strategy
- Go-to-market coordination across partners
- Value chain consolidation and optimization
- Shared risk-reward frameworks
In my work I try to show, the business ecosystem layer “enhances competitiveness, enables shared risks and rewards, and fosters economies of scale that benefit all participants.” Without this integration, innovation ecosystems generate ideas that die in translation.
Missing the “What Matters” Filter
Business ecosystems are grounded in market realities, customer needs, and economic viability. When integrated with innovation ecosystems, they provide:
- Problem validation mechanisms
- Customer-centric design constraints
- Market signal interpretation across the network
- Resource allocation discipline
Equally my Composable Innovation Framework recognizes this through its problem validation layer—but most innovation ecosystem thinking skips this entirely, leading to elegant solutions for non-problems.
Missing the Adaptive Intelligence
The dynamic ecosystem component of my IIBE is crucial: it’s the “provocateur and main catalyst challenger” that enables rapid reconfiguration. Business ecosystems without innovation ecosystem dynamism become rigid. Innovation ecosystems without business ecosystem discipline become unmoored. Only integration creates:
- Continuous sensing and responding to market shifts
- Rapid iteration based on multi-stakeholder feedback
- Resilience through distributed intelligence
- Co-evolutionary adaptation
The Transition Imperative for the Connected Future
Why transition today rather than later?
1. Technology Convergence Creates a Narrow Window
AI/ML, blockchain, digital twins, IoT, and edge computing are converging to make ecosystem orchestration technically feasible in ways impossible even five years ago. My further work on meta-twinning and the industrial metaverse shows this clearly. But this window won’t stay open—early ecosystem builders will establish standards, platforms, and network effects that become increasingly difficult to displace.
Organizations delaying ecosystem transition are not being prudent; they’re ceding structural advantage.
2. Regulatory and Societal Expectations Are Forcing Collaboration
Sustainability requirements, circular economy mandates, supply chain transparency, and social impact metrics cannot be achieved by individual organizations. Governments and markets are creating forcing functions for ecosystem coordination. Organizations clinging to standalone innovation will find themselves unable to meet basic compliance requirements, let alone competitive standards.
3. Talent and Knowledge Are Reorganizing Around Networks
The most capable innovators—particularly younger generations—expect to work in collaborative, purpose-driven networks rather than siloed corporate structures. Organizations that can’t offer ecosystem engagement will suffer talent disadvantages that compound over time.
4. First-Mover Advantages in Ecosystem Orchestration Are Massive
The entity that orchestrates a valuable ecosystem—like Siemens with Xcelerator, or Apple with the App Store—captures disproportionate value. My recent work shows these platforms create lock-in through network effects, not technology per se. Late movers become participants rather than orchestrators—a structural disadvantage that’s difficult to overcome.
The Integration Architecture: Your IIBE as the Path Forward
What makes this Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE) framework compelling is that it solves the integration problem structurally:
Dual-Layered Architecture:
- Vertical layers (Innovation, Entrepreneurial, Business, Dynamic, Enterprise ecosystems) provide specialized domains
- Horizontal components (value creation, collaborative innovation, governance, adaptive strategy) provide integration mechanisms
- The framework is simultaneously comprehensive and modular
Dynamic Core: Positioning dynamic ecosystems as the central driver is brilliant—it ensures the entire system can “thrive on change and quickly reconfigure itself” rather than ossifying.
Practical Implementation Path: The framework offers assessment tools, design patterns, readiness frameworks, and progressive integration pathways rather than all-or-nothing transformation.
The Provocative Conclusion
Organizations face a stark choice: transform their innovation discipline to operate at ecosystem scale, or watch it become irrelevant.
The stand-alone innovation department—even one practicing “open innovation”—is becoming what the stand-alone IT department was in the 1990s: a relic of compartmentalized thinking that cannot survive networked reality. Helping the start-up on innovation is simply for the “birds”. It needs a real connected difference.
But here’s the truly compelling argument: Integration of innovation and business ecosystem thinking isn’t just defensive. It’s the only path to offense. It’s how organizations:
- Address wicked problems competitors can’t touch
- Create value propositions impossible to replicate
- Build moats through network complexity rather than IP alone
- Achieve growth that scales across ecosystems rather than hitting organizational limits
My work positions this perfectly, it is why I moved from simply innovation, through innovation ecosystems to interconnected and integrated business ecosystems: we’re not adapting to ecosystems; we’re designing for the “entire IIBE as a living, self-aware system of orchestrated interdependence.”
The question isn’t whether to transition. It’s whether to lead the transition or follow someone else’s ecosystem design who is focusuing on the future, not waiting for the 30th PwC version of why innovation is not working today.
The connected future belongs to those who connect.Why not come and connect with me, I can help you make this “connective innovative” leap.