Business ecosystem

Business Ecosystem is a strategic planning concept originated by James F. Moore and widely adopted in the high tech community, starting in the early 1990s. The basic definition comes from Moore's book, The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems (HarperBusiness, 1996).

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Business Ecosystem

The concept was introduced by Moore in the Harvard Business Review in May/June of 1993, and won the McKinsey Award for article of the year. Moore wrote - An economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals--the organisms of the business world. This economic community produces goods and services of value to customers, who are themselves members of the ecosystem. The member organizations also include suppliers, lead producers, competitors, and other stakeholders. Over time, they co-evolve their capabilities and roles, and tend to align themselves with the directions set by one or more central companies. Those companies holding leadership roles may change over time, but the function of ecosystem leader is valued by the community because it enables members to move toward shared visions to align their investments and to find mutually supportive roles.

The concept and associated methods became part of the standard practice of strategy making among companies including Hewlett-Packard, IBM,Intel, Microsoft, SAP, Softbank and many others.

The concept has since been applied more broadly to a variety of problems in network-centric strategy making, including foreign policy and national and regional economic development. It was one of the antecedents to the concept of Network-Centric Warfare[1] in military strategy.

The most comprehensive current treatment of the concept is from Harvard Business School faculty member Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien, in their book The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of Business Ecosystems Mean for Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainability (Harvard Business School Press, 2004)[2]. Their work is also available in an article in the Harvard Business Review[3] and Harvard Business School Press online[4].

References

• Harvard Business Review in May/June of 1993
• The Death of Competition (ISBN 0-88730-850-3)

See also

• Economic network
• enterprise
• exchange
• interdependence
• knowledge
• Value (economics)
• Value chain
• Value conversion
• Value network
• Value network analysis