There’s no such thing as “the ecosystem”

Similar to living creatures in a biological ecosystem, companies live in a business ecosystem. According to James Moore, a business ecosystem is an economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals – the organisms of the business world. A business ecosystem is characterized by three aspects. First, there’s a symbiotic relationship between … Read more

Be the protagonist of your life: conclusion

The last posts have taken us through 15 rules that I believe are important to ensure we’re the protagonist of our own lives. As I wrote in the introduction to this series, I believe that those who read my content have in common that we take a proactive approach to life and view ourselves as … Read more

2023: prediction is hard, but …

The baseball player, Yogi Berra, famously said “Prediction is hard. Especially about the future.” That is of course entirely correct. Who of us predicted the COVID pandemic or the way the stock market tanked in 2022? Of course, there are always doomsayers who continuously predict these things, but they are right in the way a … Read more

Boost your digitalization: platformize

Many of the companies I work with aspire to build an ecosystem around their product portfolio. The idea of having others complement your offering and increasing its stickiness while taking a cut of the revenue generated by these complementors is, of course, incredibly appealing. As with most things in life, if something sounds too good … Read more

Boost your digitalization: ecosystem dimension

Western civilization is built on the notion of the sovereign individual: each person is unique with his or her rights, responsibilities, dreams and fears standing separate from others. Buddhist dogma takes the exact opposite perspective: the notion of self is an illusion and the goal of meditation and other religious practices is to free yourself … Read more

Rule 10: Engage with your ecosystem

Traditional business ecosystems were quite static. Partners stayed partners, competitors stayed competitors and your customers were the same as who they were yesterday. In a digital world, however, business ecosystems are in continuous flux. Your supplier becomes your competitor. You become your customer’s competitor. You partner with companies that you never heard of a month … Read more

Rule 7: Think holistic

The traditional way of organizing companies was in functional departments where people with the same skillset and education could focus on specific challenges, solve these and then hand over the result to the department that would integrate all the parts from all the functions into one working system. The perceived advantage was that each expert … Read more

Don’t go down with the ship

Last week, we had a workshop with the Software Center companies on new business models and their coexistence with traditional models. The overall trend is that all companies are looking to transition from traditional, transactional business models to more continuous ones. The challenge is that the more continuous you aim for your business to be, … Read more