Ecosystems – it’s a paradigmatic shift, not a pattern, stupid!

1. Ecosystems - everyone's new darling?!

Today, ecosystems seem to be everyone's new darling. When Dave Ulrich, the "father of modern HR", and Phil Kotler, the "father of modern marketing", have the same mission - to establish ecosystem thinking in their field - ecosystems must be of some importance. There is only one thing that can express more relevance to a new topic! The top thinker community of the Global Peter Drucker Forum and the title of their annual meeting. So guess what the title is 2019? It's the "power of ecosystems"! By the way: Clayton Christensen (Job to be done theory!) and John Hagel (Power of Pull!) are not only part of the Drucker Community, but also two of the most relevant thinkers for a new ecosystem thinking.

2. Ecosystems, a pattern? The “Great Misunderstanding”!

Ecosystems? Isn't this the form of collaboration between Apple and the app development community or between Daimler (VW, Toyota, GM,...) and the supplier network?

If ecosystems are misunderstood as a particular pattern of collaboration between companies with a dominant company as ecosystem leader, then perhaps we are missing the opportunity for a truly large and broad transformation of our economic logic. There aren't so many Apple or Daimler companies and collaboration between companies is only one aspect of ecosystem thinking. What is the alternative? Understanding the ecosystem metaphor as a broader opportunity to rethink our economic logic in a very fundamental and general way.

From "Value Chains" to "Ecosystems"

Unfortunately even James F. Moore, the “father of the term business ecosystems” (s. HBR) may mislead us towards this pattern thinking, when he writes:

“In a business ecosystem, companies coevolve 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. … Apple, IBM, Ford, Wal-Mart, and Merck have all been or still are the leaders of business ecosystems.”

3. Ecosystems, the paradigma of the “Great Transformation”!

Robert Lusch and Stephen Vargo, the "fathers of service-dominant logic", opened the concept to a broader understanding when they defined a service ecosystem as a ?relatively self-contained, self-adjusting system of resource-integrating actors that are connected by shared institutional logics and mutual value creation ...”: This is for us a fundamental step towards an understanding of ecosystems as a paradigmatic shift away from the old materialistic and material “Adam Smith” logic of ego based, complementary work division and sequential production in organizations and exchange of products on markets.

For us collaborative value creation (“eco creation”) may be understood as

the recursive process of

1. sharing and integrating of competencies within a network and
2. emergence of new competencies and values and
3. participation of the network stakeholders by resharing of the new competencies and values based on shared institutional logics.

This is a very broad, open description of collaborative life, collaborative problem solving/ solution creation and value participation. Ecosystems are systems of eco creation including systems with an inadequate instititutional logic (“Adam Smith Logic”). With ecosystems thinking you change the way you understand and design economic systems for a better eco creation. It is the bigger picture:

• … understanding and designing “new” structures, “new” actors and “new” roles beyond product, markets, organizations, customer, producer and suppliers, e.g. the influencer or the prosumer
• … understanding and designing “new” collaborative platforms and practices and new logics of collaboration beyond the commerce and production centric value creation towards the bigger picture of collaborative problem solving and learning

4. Meta-disruption of structures - beyond product, market, ...

This shift of the ecosystem paradigm a destroys the old structural metaphors of the material and materialistic “Adam Smith” world. Markets and organizations are converging into ecosystems, especially when transactions costs will be almost zero and Ronald Coase and his transaction cost theory are no longer valid to differentiate them. More organization in markets and more market in organizations. And customers / consumers, producers and suppliers? The prosumer of Alvin Toffler was only the beginning of the meta disruption of our ecosystem revolution. In the end such a prosumer as an influencer may be a more relevant for a Co-Creation hyper-organization than a lot of the gig workers and he is not alone as a new “role model” of the ecosystem economy.

And products? They disappear in the connected, Co-Creative service cloud of the ecosystem / platform economy. If mobility as a service or competence is what matters, a car and even a Porsche is just one alternative building block in the network to fulfil the job to be done.

5. Meta-disruption of logic – beyond push, hierarchy, planning…

The meta-disruption of the ecosystem thinking will not only destroy the old structural metaphors, but also the management logic as we know it. Push, hierarchy, planning, … table 1 describes the changes in the structure of our 7P model and the 7S model of McKinsey:

From Old to New Logic

6. Meta disruption of the math – beyond infinitesimal calculus

But even the “mathematics” of the old economy is no longer adequate. O=P(I) is the iconic formula for an “Output is Processed Input” Economy and the local optimization with infinitesimal calculus models. The CN=CN*() (CN) formula describes the “relatively self-contained, self-adjusting system of resource-integrating actors that are connected by shared institutional logics and mutual value creation ...” of Lusch/Vargo. The (economic) world is a living system, not a process and the mathematics have to be adequate for living systems.

From Old to New Math

One simple example: Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller uses in his Director’s Lecture (2017) the Kermack-McKendrick SIR model of the epidemic proliferation to describe the “epidemic proliferation” of narratives of the “Narrative Economy”. With the S of SIR for the number susceptible, I for the number of infectious, and R for the number recovered two functions CNi() "Infection": Susceptible, Infectious -> Infectious and CNh() "Healing": Infectious -> Recovered are sufficient to analyze how fast narratives might influence ecosystems.

7. 7P for a systematic “Ecosystem Thinking”!

To help people to change their thinking we developed a 7P model of “Ecoystem Thinking” based on the “Design Thinking” model of Winograd et al. It will help people to rethinking their logic of marketing, learning, HR and everything else ?? in a systematic way.

The 7P model for ecosystems

Epilogue: Global Peter Drucker Forum

With the focus on the "Power of Ecosystems" the Global Peter Drucker Forum has the opportunity to change fundamentally the way of economic thinking towards a more sustainable, human centric economy. As a tribute to Charles Handy: Let us not fail!

Do you want to join the Global Peter Drucker Forum. Read more here.