A good business model is likely to take several steps and approaches to achieve enhanced ecosystems. Businesses these days tend to depend upon developing an appropriate partnership ecosystem to succeed. Be it a multi-billion-dollar company or a startup firm, it is important to be aware of how to develop them. Here are 8 steps to build business ecosystems.
8 Steps Involved In Developing Successful Business Ecosystems
1. Manage Competition and Cooperation:
Managing internal cooperation and competition within a huge ecosystem filled with multi-players can be a complicated task. Hence, undertake the following:
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- Know how open/closed the ecosystem is likely to be.
- Determine the ecosystem’s degree of exclusivity much in advance.
- Adhere to excellent partnership management principles. It should include developing well-crafted contracts, trust, effective communication, setting clear goals, relationship management, etc.2.
2. Partner Selection:
Partner combination is likely to provide the network in the marketplace with a competitive edge. Ask the following questions:
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- Partner type desired and why?
- What abilities can each partner bring along?
- How to attract such partners? What will motivate them? In what order to onboard them?
- How do partners are to interact with one another? Governance structure?
3. Scaling Partnership Numbers:
In any corporate ecosystem, customer-supplier relationships matter a lot. It is very much crucial to get the right players in place to derive that marketplace advantage. This way, partners and components can work and complement one another. The ecosystem designer tends to think of complementariness that should be present between players. More players present in the ecosystem transforms into larger value development.
4. Organizing Business Ecosystems:
The ecosystem of a business cannot be termed to be some random company collection. Rather, it needs to be organized as a group. The ecosystem can be rather organized in three ways, namely:
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- Surrounding the common platform.
- Surrounding centrally managed organization.
- Surrounding supply chain and Product Management
5. Developing the Business Ecosystems:
The fact is ecosystems grow or die. Hence, to ensure healthy development, consider the sequence where that development is to take place. Reorganize as the business scales up. Perhaps the company began as a small grouping. With time, it is likely to grow and involve more players. To offer better customer-supplier relationships with a one-firm-one vote rather was insufficient to derive leadership. There might be needed a tiered voting right structure.
6. Developing Sides:
The business network perhaps could be a multi-sided platform. This is a key consideration to make while designing a network. But such a business model will invite a few questions, like:
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- What number of sides the does network need to have?
- Where to derive network advantage?
- Where does money flow or what transactions get facilitated?
7. Sharing Profits:
In any business-related ecosystem, there are stated to be two parts, namely:
a. Understand each player’s share to be contributed towards that total value. This will again be based on each player’s bargaining power. For instance, similar types of players in fewer numbers will only give more bargaining power & vice-versa.
b. The overall value that a group created: Is based on network advantage derived from the marketplace, its organizational abilities, and who’s in it! This helps create total value.
8. Launching/scaling a Platform:
When starting any ecosystem or network, there are bound to be experienced some problems. A network is likely to be valuable only if players exist. If not valuable, then players are unlikely to come.
Hence, players and value combinations should be delivered by the platform-based ecosystem. Also be in place proper Product Management, free giveaways, and platform charges. It is equally vital to know how perfect balance should be developed for prosperous, healthy growth.
Getting to know the above steps will allow you to develop viable and functional business ecosystems.
