How to describe complexity in the business field? If we place ourselves in context, we can talk about the macro, innovative trends, changes in industry, markets and customers. From my organizational response, it is rather to be very good in a world of interconnectivity, uncertainty, speed of change, multidimensionality and ambiguity.
In any case, complexity is and is within this instability where organizations need to develop their own “strategic homeostasis.” That is, to ensure that the business system maintains its internal balance despite the changes in its environment, and within this complexity it manages to grow with greater competitiveness and speed, reducing capital and achievement risks.
In this sense, we can observe different examples of “unicorns” that were born and evolved quickly as innovative business ecosystems. For example, Airbnb, Ordidosya, Mercado Libre, Agrofy, Requise and many others.
And in this note we will see how, within complexity, we can accelerate our capacity for business growth by becoming orchestra and/or participants in business ecosystems.
To do this, I propose to travel, as Checklist, four great aspects to take into account:
1- What do we talk about when we refer to business ecosystems? The ecosystems applied to the business environment have their origin in the ’90s, thanks to valuable contributions such as James F. Moore, who introduced the concept of Business Ecosystemwhere companies, customers and suppliers co-evolve to add value.
At the same time, there is a direct relationship between complexity and ecosystems. Before extremely complex contexts, a business ecosystem integrates different simpler communicating vessels of different systems that solve their needs, based on a common purpose.
2 – What characterizes business ecosystems? Efraín Ortiz Pabón in his book “Business ecosystems, innovation and entrepreneurship”, describes their DNA: define the nature and quantity of intangible assets that will create and how they will assemble them from “Feel and capture market opportunities to transform them”. Thus, ecosystems cooperate and compete in a tension that is regulated from strategic thinking, evolve permanently, value research, discarded learning on the road, access to information, feel and model developments, the magnitude of knowledge, the identification of user needs, the relationship between existing and possible solutions. In addition, they are passionate about the information they have, capture anxieties of frustrated clients, make the network their asset, learn, interpret and create.
– They organize themselves from numerous and various components, which they interact and relate not linearly. Consequently, they combine with other ecosystems to complement and respond both proactively and adaptively.
-Sus Skills key to regulate interactions are self -organization, diversity, complementation and cooperation, adaptability and coevolution of its members towards a shared destination. In addition, they do not discard learning, but investigate and seek creativity, cause fluid interdependence and communication between all, and apply these skills to capture market opportunities and transform them into solutions.
3- rAzons that invite to be a member of a business ecosystem. In a generic way, already way of example, we can propose five relevant reasons, and all of them can be combined and become present simultaneously:
- Leave without prejudice from customers and markets, understand and read them and be able to assemble solutions and give higher quality responses, from the maturity of third parties that complement us.
- If we have a business with a mature offer of products and services, it is a very good way to expand markets and acquire customers, from the third -party platform to which our offer add value
- If on the contrary we have a rich portfolio of customer relations, it is an adequate vehicle to generate fidelity and profitability, integrating solutions that are strategically complementary and enrich our value proposition and our positioning.
- To complement a traditional robust positioning with innovative DNA solutions, which allow a broader positioning before the look of clients with that commercial profile, providing digital experiences with strong perceived customization and sustaining that innovative spirit as essence.
- To evolve the efficiency of the costs of our operation, with contributions of Know How and capital of third parties, more flexible to adapt the size to fluctuating demands, vs the traditional scheme that increases fixed costs and then struggles to recover the investment
4 – How do business ecosystems organize? Ecosystems can be thought of rings, following an order.
In a first ring are the activities Business Corethat provide the substance of the value proposal.
In a second ring, which is defined as “extended company”, which contains differentiating elements, some of which with the evolution and preference of customers can be located in the first ring over time, and thirdly too. Here there is a “dialogue with independent ecosystems” that allows us to join its innovation roadmap, winning in time and reducing exploration risks.
In the third place is the area of recipients and impacted, who are also active members and from their evolution of supply (suppliers) and their pressure on demand (clients, society and any direct or indirect recipient of the value proposal), will be the ones who will shoot mobilizing processes in the ecosystem.
And finally, the roles of participants and the orchestra appear. Participants are evolutionary agents, who choose the ecosystem as their space for challenge, innovation and value construction, while the orchestra, is the one who proposes and custody the vision and maintains the “homeostasis.”
The disruptions of companies such as those named at the beginning of this note give us an idea of the way they have impacted their industries, to the degree of setting the new standards in their markets. For example, retail is not the same after Amazon and Mercado Libre as before.
The market no longer gives us the margins of time or economic to learn to complete and be competitive, and we need others as good as we do.
The final reflection is directed mainly for different types of entrepreneurs.
- If I am responsible for a leading, big and mature company, conceived under the techniques of successful management until this century, to be able to contrast me in these models should help me to understand How to keep my leadership position and my positioning Before an increasingly evangelized customer profile for Custom Centric practices, before competitors who, touring these paths, neutralize me
- If, on the other hand, I am an entrepreneur about to undertake Before a new “Customer Centric” market, this reflection leads to thinking if all the risk of capital and differentiation in my capabilities or evolution complementarily with other participants through a business ecosystem that generates a Best value proposition in less time and with shared risks.
- Finally, If I am a businessman born of business ecosystemsthat I grew up and today I have sizes comparable to mature companies, the challenge is to take care of and Hold my DNA, defining how to support it, when my size made me lose freshness
Edgar Morin said that complexity is not a foundation, it is the regulatory principle that never loses sight of the reality of the phenomenal tissue in which we are and that our world constitutes. ”
Orchestar is learning to manage it.
* Gustavo Calveiro is an Advisor and Mentor with more than 40 years of experience in getting the complex challenges of organizations and people possible.
By Gustavo Calveiro
