Some view the rise of ecosystems as an opportunity for creating powerful new competitive advantage. New means of creating value have been developing everywhere in the form of ever-denser and richer networks of connection, collaboration, and interdependence.īusinesses around the world are responding. Over the last few decades, driven largely by digital technologies and massively increased connectivity, the economy has been moving beyond narrowly defined industries built around large, vertically integrated, and mainly “self-contained” corporations. 5īut the idea has now also taken root far beyond the US technology sector. explicitly conceived its products and services as an ecosystem that would provide customers with a seamless experience Facebook recognized the emphasis it had to place on deliberately building its “developer ecosystem” some analysts no longer see technology and media competition as simply between firms, but among ecosystems of firms operating in loose alliance. It continues to be critically important in that arena.

Initially his concept of “business ecosystems” was embraced primarily in the community that was itself creating the transformative capabilities of connection and collaboration that enabled them-the US technology sector. Moore’s insight was prescient-just on the cusp of the Internet era, and 15 years before the emergence of smartphones and the mobile access revolution. In a business ecosystem, companies co-evolve capabilities around a new innovation: They work cooperatively and competitively to support new products, satisfy customer needs, and eventually incorporate the next round of innovations. I suggest that a company be viewed not as a member of a single industry but as part of a business ecosystem that crosses a variety of industries.

They must attract resources of all sorts, drawing in capital, partners, suppliers, and customers to create cooperative networks. Yet innovative businesses can’t evolve in a vacuum. Successful businesses are those that evolve rapidly and effectively. As he wrote in a 1993 Harvard Business Review article: Noticing growing parallels, business strategist James Moore imported the concept to the increasingly dynamic and interconnected world of commerce. 3 Some view the rise of ecosystems as an opportunity for creating powerful new competitive advantage. These organisms influence each other, and their terrain they compete and collaborate, share and create resources, and co-evolve and they are inevitably subject to external disruptions, to which they adapt together. The word was coined in the 1930s by British botanist Arthur Tansley to refer to a localized community of living organisms interacting with each other and their particular environment of air, water, mineral soil, and other elements. We’re all familiar with ecosystems in the natural world. Create and download a custom PDF of the Business Trends 2015 report.

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