Ecosystem Strategies with Dr. Ron Adner

An understanding of ecosystem strategies is required for every business leader today.  It involves a new way of thinking - a new mindset.  There are massive opportunities for new businesses, processes and innovations to be created by connecting together new and different combinations of data rich businesses into new value creation engines.  In this interview with author Dr. Ron Adner, we take a deep dive into ecosystem strategies.  Enjoy!

For more insight read the article Ecosystem Business Strategies.

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Ecosystem Business Strategies

It seems business leaders today must recognize and implement two distinct kinds of business strategies.  One strategy for well established businesses in traditional industries designed to maximize efficient operations.  The other is ecosystem business strategies required for innovative, fast transforming and emerging business environments.

In the traditional automobile manufacturing industry, competitors and suppliers were well known and competition was mostly centered around incremental design changes and improving efficiencies.  Today electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers often use new and different supply chain ecosystems, and are just as likely to emerge out of Silicon Valley as Michigan.  

Ecosystem Strategies Dominate the Future - Cowboys or Not

In the rural west of the United States, it is common to meet people with libertarian political views - leave me alone and I will leave you alone.  It’s a cowboy type ethos of being independent and self-sufficient.  That’s one reason it’s so hard to get them to be compliant with social distancing and mask wearing.  They seem to struggle with sacrificing some independence for a common community good. 

Although these perspectives may serve rural cowboys well, working alone is not helpful when a business is trying to operate in an environment with emerging and competing ecosystems, which are organizations working together for their mutual benefit.  Ecosystem business strategies change the operating conditions and rules of business.  In order to survive and thrive in business today, a basic understanding of ecosystem business strategies is required.  In addition, the ability to cooperate and play nice with others in order to develop a shared and mutually beneficial value chain is critical.

When I was the CEO of an start-up mobile technology company 19 years ago, it was before Apple had mobile devices, iTunes and the Apple App Store.  It was before Google had developed Android and Google Play.  Our mobile software solutions had to be downloaded directly from our servers and individually loaded on every mobile device.  We had to spend massive amounts of time developing standardized ways of supporting and servicing our own customers.  Today all of these processes are standardized within giant ecosystems and all the ecosystem participants share in the value that was created.