In part one (see link here) of this two part series we covered what an organizational ecosystem is. In part two we’ll cover how to make them and give some example of how they could work for you. We’ll choose a societal need for our example; there are already lots of examples of high tech ecosystems (see link at Intel HERE or at Microsoft HERE )
What are some points to consider in building an organizational ecosystem?
* Every organization that is a part of the ecosystem needs to get an equal shot at a slice of the pie (be that funding, revenue or accolades), but how an individual organization makes that happen is up to an individual organizations ability. That’s determined by an individual organization ability to deliver it’s service or provide an excellent product. In the case of VME, some companies had better or more sought after products than others while some chose a niche strategy. In the case of cranberries, some farms were bigger or more productive than others and that determined what they would receive.
* The core service or technology that everyone rallies around must answer a real need. You can see this with the cranberry growers needing an association to promote the use of cranberries or in the case of VME solving an industry problem of what to standardize on in terms of a flexible high speed bus architecture. If the core service or technology doesn’t answer some fundamental need in an industry or community then it’s not likely you can get other companies to come behind it for it’s success and the success of the individual companies.
* If the coordinating organizational is a voting organization for standards or approaches, each member organizational gets one vote. So, if you setup an ecosystem that is based around solving a community’s need to feed people who need that assistance and each company that is a part of that ecosystem is voting on decisions within that ecosystem, then each company or organizational, not an individual member, gets a single vote. That makes for a level playing field for decision making regardless of organizational size.
* While two or three organizations may start an ecosystem, usually you have to sell other members on the benefits to join it. Having others join can increase the acceptance of your ecosystems mission within your target audience. In general, the more who join the greater validity of the cause or concept. In many cases, whatever an ecosystem is advocating is more likely to be more accepted than what an individual company is promoting.
But how do you get there?
You get there first of all by seeing a need and determining if your individual organizational has the economic ability or not to make the need happen. In the case of the cranberry growers, it wasn’t possible for them all to be successful individually, and yet, they all had a crop that had economic viability. By coming together they could tackle the problem. But what does coming together mean?
Come together right now…
Coming together is about contributing resources financially and otherwise to create another umbrella organizational that will focus on the larger picture and message such as cranberries are good for you or VME provides for cheaper, more standardized compute hardware over proprietary hardware. The new organizational acts as an umbrella organizational and can fill the following roles:
- Has a director or general manager who can take the organizational helm and, for the benefit of the members, promote the vision of the organizational.
- Establishes meeting times and sets a framework for the member organizations to work together to cast a vision and a mission.
- Insures that there is a legal charter for the organization that all member companies will abide by. It really facilitates this as member companies have their representatives actually do this.
- Sets the policies for the larger umbrella organizational in terms of what issues they will tackle and what they will not but submits to the vote of the members as to what they will actually do.
- Promotes the vision with a variety of public relations means such as magazines or magazine articles, web sites, etc.
- Acts as a networker to establish connections with other allied organizations that might have a parallel path but not the same vision or mission.
So how about an example of how this might work?
So let’s try looking at a societal problem for our example. You can see high tech examples in the links above as well as the examples in part one of this two part series regarding cranberry growers and the VME industry.
One nagging problem in many inner cities is health care for the poor. How does it get done? Many times independent agencies will spring up some funded by churches, hospitals, or by a government or private grant. In some cases those organizations will start small (pediatric checkups for example) then gradually gain a larger footprint as they add more services to expand and improve on their mission. But by developing an ecosystem instead of a monolithic organizational an alternative approach can be considered:
- Smaller independent organizations pull together under an umbrella organization known as Community Health
- Community Health is the primary vehicle driving forward with the promotion of health prevention and treatment in the community, setting standards for how patients are treated, liaison for the group with area hospitals, assists with accreditation work, aids in helping on billing and potentially helps with fund raising
- Smaller independent member organizations such as the dentist, pediatrician, diagnostic lab, even physical therapist focus on what they do best; providing care to the patients who most need it. They also focus on their individual practice so that they can be efficient and profitable enough to serve their patients.
- The umbrella organizational essentially creates a model or standard approach for other new health care providers to plug into to provide more services to the community
So what are the pluses and minuses of this approach
Glad you asked! The down sides may include: possible inefficiency of use of high tech equipment lab or diagnostic equipment (too many organizations have the same equipment), potential for not being able to get funding or large enough block funding as individual organizations are too small, inefficiency in billing resulting in higher overall costs.
The pluses need to be considered too such as: potential for increased competition among the smaller organizations leading to lower costs for the patients, smaller organizations providing a more personal care for the patients, perception by patients that the smaller organizations are more approachable so they seek preventative care (always a less expensive option) more frequently, and job creation from many smaller organizations starting up.
Ecosystems work in nature and they work among organizations too. All they take is a little effort but the benefits gained can help your company and the others involved and, most importantly, your customers.
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