Orchestrating ecosystem strategy designs
Many organisations today are surrounded by partners, platforms, alliances, and innovation initiatives — yet feel less strategically free than they did a few years ago.
Decisions take longer. Dependencies feel harder to unwind. Changing direction carries more friction than expected.
This isn’t a failure of leadership or ambition. It’s a signal that ecosystem exposure is accumulating quietly — often unnoticed until options start to narrow.
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
I am being asked how I structure my IIBE offering in a commercial structure to offer a clear pathway for potential clients. These are evolving as more modules are coming on stream or currently “in the works” as being validated.
The Key in my approach is to offer A modular, flexible commercial structure enabling tailored pathways for clients at different ecosystem maturity levels.
The IIBE commercial model is built as a progressive pathway, allowing clients to enter at different points depending on maturity, ambition, and urgency. All offerings align to four principles:
(1) Low-friction entry points
(2) Capability-building progression
(3) Implementation support
(4) Ongoing advisory and intelligence renewal
Every module is independent but connects into a broader arc of ecosystem capability formation.
Is the world entering a decisive shift: from platform-centric models toward fully dynamic, intelligent, continuously-orchestrated business ecosystems. I believe so.
Economic advantage, innovation performance, and adaptive capacity will increasingly depend on an organization’s ability to operate within the Intelligent Business Ecosystem solution – systems defined by circulating intelligence, shared value creation, and human–AI collaboration at every level.
This will define competitive advantage in 2026–2030. It introduces the new intelligence fabric, explains the shifts we need towards a different approach to orchestration, combined as the new strategic differentiator
Integrated Business Ecosystems will become the dominant operating logic of the second half of the decade.
The Gap Every Leader Feels—But Can’t Quite Name
We live in a world where:
Yet organisations are still run using:
This creates a structural gap:
Leaders today are attempting to run a ecosystem design with tools designed for a stable organisation or world. They disappoint but it does not need to be that way
The increasing pressure on business organizations to find real growth and impact is troubling. Expectations are growing with connected technology, the increased value from AI and the ability to collaborate all are requiring a different way to approach customers and provide radically new value opportunities.
Many of of existing organizations still operate with static operating models, hierarchical processes and siloed workflows. These modesl were built for predictability- not for complexity, interconnected markets, AI acceleration, or multi-party environments.
Today we are suffering from slower adaptation, fragmented intelligence, poor alignment across internal and external contributors, resulting in missed opportunities from this reluctance to collaborate, co-create or influence and shape markets beyond existing offerings.
What is necessary is to firstly explore why we need to shift to Ecosystems?
Mid- market sized European firms especially have always been caught in growth traps, reliant on the strength of thier domestic customers and the economies they operate within. If Germany and Europe are doing well, then the mid-market firms does well. These form the backbone of our industrial here in Europe.
In the past decade, or even more, this reliance and dependancies on the European growth engine have provide stable markets where the experience and history of these mid-sied firms has been constantly expanded in what they know- in adjacent products, regional extensions and incremental progress improvments- not through bold new market plays, there was largely this “no need” attitude.
It becomes a radically different story when the markets plateau and growth starts to flatten or become less predictable. That lost steady reliable growth momentum, increasing market vulnerability from cheaper suppliers, especially from China, the constant concerns over succession within smaller business, that growth uncertainty raises the risks.
The growing feeling of isolation and vulnerability needs a different change of mindset. From independence into different froms of collaboration, networks and business ecosystems.
There are several well-regarded frameworks for business ecosystems and digital transformation, but the Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem (IIBE) stands out for its comprehensive integration of multiple dimensions—strategic, operational, technological, governance, and societal impact—within a dynamic, adaptive architecture.
Other notable frameworks include:
IIBE’s unique strength is its systemic, living architecture approach that explicitly integrates purpose, relationship, value, governance, and technology as co-evolving layers supported by AI-driven orchestration—making it one of the most holistic and actionable frameworks available today.
Business ecosystem thinking, as outlined in the IIBE (Integrated Interconnected Business Ecosystem) blueprint, is valuable because it offers a practical, structured framework for organizations to transcend traditional business silos and evolve into adaptive, resilient ecosystems.
This approach enables organizations to unlock new growth opportunities, enhance resilience, and create sustainable competitive advantages in a rapidly changing and complex business environment.ecosystems4innovating+1
Lets do a quick Ecosystem Integration Reality Check:
Do you recgnize: Why Connection Now Defines Advantage?
Are your initiatives delivering all the value they could?
Lets recognise some of those Universal Signals Across Industries
Across energy, manufacturing, mobility, infrastructure, and so many more business sectors, the same signals keep repeating — familiar yet unresolved:
These are not capability gaps; they are connection gaps.