Ecosystem-Centered business strategy

Most governments, industries and institutions face an adaptive challenge to a changed context for strategy. The new operating environment is characterized by complexity, interactivity, and rapid evolution. It produces more challenges than any one person, business, or government can respond to effectively. This has two implications. The first is the importance of building collaboration that spans industry environments, spawns novel partnerships, and involves multiple stakeholders. The second is the importance of shaping developments proactively around a new theory for growth. The idea for ecosystems as a business metaphor was introduced in the mid-1990s, drawing on biology as a new language and logic for strategy. At the time, it was considered a fundamental shift that reframed the cutting edge for thinking about leadership and competition across a broad arc of potential settings, from airlines to restaurants. While the information technology industry is adopting a vision of digital ecosystems as a guide for technological evolution, a wider embrace of business ecosystems as opportunity space for new markets and competitive advantage has stalled. This paper provides context to close an implementation gap between technology innovation and ecosystem-centered business strategy, and introduces an ecosystem approach to create a self-generating market in the pharmaceutical industry. It also suggests a convulsing international system reveals the deeper structural transformation reshaping the human condition, creating new commercial pressure that will force leaders in industry and government to reorient their thinking in order to escape the Darwinian reaper.