Global food manufacturer, 45bn revenue, 130k employees

“Help us navigate and orchestrate the complexity of our brand’s multi-channel environment. Find places to generate value and create an ecosystem strategy.”

Approach

  1. Frame business ecosystems, define the term and its boundaries

  2. Develop an ecosystem diagnosis and design approach, including replicable frameworks

  3. Analyse the brand’s ecosystem, define opportunities and challenges

  4. Develop the ecosystem strategy that takes advantage of opportunities and addresses challenges

Ecosystem case studies revealed common principles that informed a design approach

Each company case study revealed that successful ecosystems have multiple closed loops. No activity is done for its own sake, but rather to enable another part of the business to unlock new or generate more value. The best ecosystems have a mix of value streams, not each immediately generates monetary value, but opens doors elsewhere.

Nodes build the backbone of an ecosystem and either generate or absorb value. Value links connect organisational nodes. They are products generated or consumed by the nodes and can be transformed and transferred across the ecosystem.

Here are some example questions to ask to get under the skin of an ecosystem:

  • What propositions, products and services does the organisation provide?

  • Who are the key stakeholders inside or outside the organisation?

  • What are the organisation’s key capabilities?

  • What fuels the sales of products and services?

  • What impact does a product, service or brand have on the wider organisation and other stakeholders?

Keywords: ecosystem, business strategy, brand strategy, channel strategy

Systems Thinking

The inspiration for this project came from the famous ecosystem sketch Walt Disney created in 1957. It illustrates how various business activities and their outcomes enable other parts of the organisation to thrive. While such well designed ecosystems are more prevalent today, there are many more organisations who would benefit from a more codified approach. Systems thinking approaches can be adopted to understand complex structures, providing the requisite tool to recognise untapped opportunities for value creation. Systems Thinking has since gained more traction, especially in a multi-channel environment and increasingly complex market dynamics.

I have written an article about the methods used to create case studies on companies such as Nike, Lego, Amazon and RedBull, in the SDN Touchpoint Journal in 2021. I also facilitated a workshop at the UCD Gathering in Scotland, helping attendees use systems thinking to untangle their organisations and find opportunities for growth and change.

The ‘10 Types of Innovation’ framework was instrumental to developing the ecosystem mapping approach. It provided an ideal stating point to parse apart the activities of an organisation, where and how value is created and added.

In a further attempt to define Systems Thinking I have mapped systems on a scale (as I see them) to untangle how I encountered the term in practice.

Previous

Governance System
Next

Innovation Strategy