A short presentation for the high-level conceptualisation of ecosystem strategy

1. Ecosystem as strategic thinking:
boundary, composition and dynamics
Hong Hou

2. Heterogenous ecosystems that impact firm strategy
Corporate
level
e.g., google ecosystem e.g., digital ecosystem
Business
level
e.g., android ecosystem e.g., mobile ecosystem
Endogeous/ relational zone Exogenous / environments
Focal firm with
dynamic capabilities
The extent to which ecosystem dynamics can be intentionally manipulated
The leve of which the
strategy is impacted by
ecosystem dynamics

3. My focus is on endogenous ecosystems
Environment
Ecosystem
Focal actor
A community of actors affiliated to, or under the influence
of, a focal actor for continuous innovation.
It is scalable from business level to corporate level
• Depends on definition of the“focal actor”
It is a genus differentia definition (Granger 1984), with
• composition differentia being actors
• boundary differentia being the scope of affiliation, and
• purpose differentia being continuous innovation.

4. Boundary- the scope of affiliation/influence/power
2020-5-13
One should be very careful to consider whether to include a
firm as an ecosystem member
• The key is the ability to influence who is called an ecosystem
actor, so as to tap into its resources as potential source of
competitive advantage
• If your competitor can equally access the actor’s resources,
the actor should not be considered as affiliated to your
ecosystem. It is just a market-mediated partner.
• But it is possible to transfer it to be one
Sources: Santos and Eisenhardt 2005

5. Composition- what does an ecosystem actor really mean?
2020-5-13
Source: Kapoor 2018
Ecosystem as an emergent actor-to-actor network
• Actors have value, position and capabilities, their social
and institutional contexts, and their self-organising
processes (Fjeldstad et al., 2012; Nambisan, 2018).
• Actors are usually embedded in multiple and overlapping
structures (Lusch and Vargo, 2014; Nambisan, 2018), and
the opportunity space is often unbounded (Moore, 2006)
and of poor visibility (Datté e et al., 2018).

6. Digitalisation pushes the ecosystem to the center of stage
6
Dematerialisation
Recombination
Industrial age
Fluidity Unbundling
Value creation
/innovation
Digital
Digital age
Source: Normann 2001

7. What really matters is ecosystem dynamics cross levels
2020-5-13
Environment
Ecosystem
Focal firm
Macro co-evolution
Micro co-evolution
Ecosystem
coevolution

8. At business level: ecosystem as coevolution process
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Platform thinking Ecosystem thinking
Actor
Platform
Platform Platform Non-platform
Actor Actor Actor
Platform Actor
Ecosystem
Platform
Environment
Ecosystem
Product/platform

9. At corporate level: ecosystem as growth platform
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A gang of actors
can do many
“things”
The inteferce of resource
aggregation between
environment and ecosystem
The more
“things”, the
larger the gang

10. Thanks for listening!
Content based on
• A paper published on LRP entitled“Learning
Club, Home Court, and Magnetic Field:
Facilitating business model portfolio extension
with a multi-faceted corporate ecosystem”
• A paper under review with Technovation entitled
“Parting for a better reunion: a constructive
examination on ecosystems ”
• A working paper entitled “From ecosystem
structure to ecosystem architecture: the role of
industry in digital transformation”
• Discussion with several firms who are interested
with my work
2020-5-13