Craft your ecosystem strategy and ensure future growth in a world of platforms ADVANCED TOOLSET ABOUT THE TOOLSET FROM EGOSYSTEM TO ECOSYSTEM PURCHASE THE TOOLSET

Executive Summary

It helps you to identify opportunities for platforms in future ecosystems. But you can also use it to navigate through the options of Buy, Build, Partner, Join and evaluate your best option to win in future ecosystems. We developed a new playbook and tools including clear definitions, step-by-step guides and practical tools you can use in strategy workshops.

Complete Playbook

A complete playbook will guide you through the understandings of ecosystems, strategies to win in future ecosystems, examples of good and bad companies and a lot insights from our daily work with clients.

Step-by-Step Plan

We developed a detailed 5-step process explaining you exactly what needs to be done in each phase. 

Canvases (Online and Printable)

We equip you with the right tools (canvases) you can use in online collaboration tools like Miro or Mural. Or you print them out and use them offline in workshops with your teams.

Digital Ecosystems - A new inflection point

With the rise of the digital economy we saw that new players (platforms) like UBER, AirBnB etc. disrupted every market and put themselves between the customers and the producers of products & services. This not only meant that incumbent companies lost important customer touchpoints & insights, but also saw a dramatic shrinking of their margins.

And platforms are not stopping to expand their dominance – to become meta-platforms / super apps or how we call them – Digital Business Ecosystems (DBE). 

DBE bundle more and more services (and platforms) under one umbrella to delivery the users a seamless experience. This also means that the boundaries of industries are blurring – e.g. from automative and travel towards an integrated “Mobility” ecosystem.

Ecosystem Playbook

To help incumbent companies, startups and platforms to make better decisions based on an ecosystem perspective, we developed a new playbook and tools including clear definitions, step-by-step guides and practical tools you can use in strategy workshops.

Ecosystem Journey Canvas + Tools

While ecosystems represent an integrated set of services for the customer, traditional tools like the “Customer Journey Mapping” are not sufficient anymore. 

So we developed our own tools like the  “Ecosystem Journey Canvas“. It is based on intense research and interviews with executives of over 450 companies and many many workshops.  

Read more about the tools and the playbook below and enjoy applying it to make better decisions.

THE ecosystem strategy toolset

Your Guide

The first step for building platforms

The Ecosystem Strategy Playbook is complementary to the first phase of venture building process. It helps innovators to understand the current position in an market ecosystem, helps to identify growth opportunities especially platforms and to evaluate strategic moves.

Tools & Canvases

The three layers of ecosystem thinking

“Ecosystems” is the new buzzword in management. But what does it actually mean to have an Ecosystem Strategy? 

We put our experience of the last 2 years working closely with corporates to create solid Ecosystem Strategies on 3 layers.

1. Corporate Portfolio Layer -> to make corporate strategy decisions

2. Market Ecosystems -> to explore and evaluate growth opportunities on selected markets

3. Platform Ecosystems -> to accelerate & stimulate network effects with the right partners

 This playbook and toolset is made for CEOs, CDOs, Head of Strategy, Head of Venturing and Growth Leaders of Platforms. 

Practical Frameworks

We remove the buzz and clarify what it means to have an “Ecosystem Strategy” with clear definitions on three layers.

This includes the shift from egosystems to ecosystem thinking and the dominance of new types of business models, based on network effects. 

Deeper explorations of the concepts of functional integration, an approach followed by Digital Masters like Apple.

And process blueprints how to integrate an ecosystem strategy into your corporate strategy processes.

Step-by-Step Process

In the last 2 years we worked closely with organizations to develop successful ecosystem strategies. Over the time we continuously fine tuned our processes and tools. 

The Guide outlines a proven and practical 8 week program helping you to identify and evaluate growth opportunities and strategic moves in selected market ecosystems.

Additionally it helps you to pick the right tools from our Platform Innovation Kit toolset for the required steps.

Practical Tools & Templates

Download the guide and you will receive practical tools we developed to shape your strategy together with your team. 

1. Ecosystem Journey Canvas to explore selected markets

2. Functional Integration Map to define your horizontally and vertically integrated portfolio

3. Platform Value Network to identify the right value propositions from your platform stakeholders (consumers, producers, partners)

Download the complete Guide + Toolset

  • Follow a structured approach to define a winning ecosystem strategy
  • Identify and prioritize innovation whitespaces and areas for future growth
  • Define an aligned future offering portfolio
  • Decide on build / buy / partner approaches
  • Optimize resource allocation

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