As introduced in a previous article, Business Ecosystems are the “dark matter” usually not considered while designing a winning Company Strategy.
The Company Centric vision - where the focus is on the Company “within a Market and against Competitors” – should be instead altered by that of “an Ecosystem where other Companies live, competing but also coexisting and – possibly – fitting together”.
The single Customer need which a Company would fulfill through its product/service requires to be seen as one of a Chain of Needs which are the reason for a Business Ecosystem to exist.
The two visions – Business Ecosystems and Chain of Needs – are complementary and cannot be faced with separately as they clearly affect each other.
Having such a Strategic paradigm in mind, which are the two key questions that require to be taken into account while designing an effective Strategy?
Which is the extent of the Chain of Needs that a Company contributes to satisfy?
Intuitively, a Chain of Needs with one need only is the typical approach where a Company competes in the Market trying to pursue a unique position, introducing barriers to incumbents and gaining/conserving as much competitive advantage as possible. One need only brings to the underlying image of a set of Companies which compete for a single Market resource and the behavior of such system is clearly explained by the Lotka-Volterra equation (you may refer to a previous article - Preys, Prayers and Market Behaviors - for an extended analysis). Questions are: does the “one need only” model really exist in a real Chain of Needs? Or is it the consequence of overlooking/underestimating the underlying complexity within a Market?
Given a Chain of Needs, which are the “adjacent possible” which might be perceived by Customers as more attractive?
The concept of adjacent possible is that of an Ecosystem which slightly differs from the one a Company is aiming to tackle. Crossing many “adjacent possible” Ecosystems might lead to a brand new Ecosystem able to satisfy a more appealing Chain of Needs. Truth is that a Business Ecosystem – as any living system – is always “evolving” towards new directions: small changes – accumulated over time – may lead to an abrupt change where Companies could appear completely out of focus, being now part of a Chain of Needs which is destined to extinction.
The Company Centric vision - where the focus is on the Company “within a Market and against Competitors” – should be instead altered by that of “an Ecosystem where other Companies live, competing but also coexisting and – possibly – fitting together”.
The single Customer need which a Company would fulfill through its product/service requires to be seen as one of a Chain of Needs which are the reason for a Business Ecosystem to exist.
The two visions – Business Ecosystems and Chain of Needs – are complementary and cannot be faced with separately as they clearly affect each other.
Having such a Strategic paradigm in mind, which are the two key questions that require to be taken into account while designing an effective Strategy?
Which is the extent of the Chain of Needs that a Company contributes to satisfy?
Intuitively, a Chain of Needs with one need only is the typical approach where a Company competes in the Market trying to pursue a unique position, introducing barriers to incumbents and gaining/conserving as much competitive advantage as possible. One need only brings to the underlying image of a set of Companies which compete for a single Market resource and the behavior of such system is clearly explained by the Lotka-Volterra equation (you may refer to a previous article - Preys, Prayers and Market Behaviors - for an extended analysis). Questions are: does the “one need only” model really exist in a real Chain of Needs? Or is it the consequence of overlooking/underestimating the underlying complexity within a Market?
Given a Chain of Needs, which are the “adjacent possible” which might be perceived by Customers as more attractive?
The concept of adjacent possible is that of an Ecosystem which slightly differs from the one a Company is aiming to tackle. Crossing many “adjacent possible” Ecosystems might lead to a brand new Ecosystem able to satisfy a more appealing Chain of Needs. Truth is that a Business Ecosystem – as any living system – is always “evolving” towards new directions: small changes – accumulated over time – may lead to an abrupt change where Companies could appear completely out of focus, being now part of a Chain of Needs which is destined to extinction.
