Are you building an EGO-system?

You have maybe heard of the "Apple ecosystem," "Android ecosystem," Facebook ecosystem," and "Google ecosystem." Using impressive company labels on the ecosystem can be a wrong signal to the company regarding its role. With this "ego-system" approach, they tend to take their "market winner" mentality into the ecosystem. This may make it harder to establish followership and a win-win relationship.

So, how can a company build a healthy platform ecosystem? Here are four reflections that can help you evaluate your candidacy as an ecosystem leader, or are you assembling an ego system?

First, a reconciled value proposition across the ecosystem.

An excellent place to start is to build an ecosystem by pursuing a reconciled value proposition, not around the corporate identity. This shift in mindset supports the formulation and execution of more successful strategies for leadership and followership in an ecosystem world. Building a flourishing platform ecosystem is about having an alignment strategy that may lead to network effects and create win-win output for everyone.

Companies aspire for leadership within their industries — being a market leader brings great returns and fulfillment. But ecosystems present different dynamics. In a thriving ecosystem, there should not be a "winner" on top, only partners that win differently. Therefore, the leader in an ecosystem needs to understand the different winning positions to deliver the value proposition. To facilitate this value creation is the ecosystem leader's role.

Secondly, define roles and have an alignment strategy.

The next step to succeed in building a flourishing ecosystem is to have defined the roles, positions and flows across the partners that create the value proposition. The platform business model can only utilize the power of the ecosystem if it consists of a unified and clearly defined core value transaction between the actors based on co-specialization, complementarities, and different roles. Again, this will require a unique alignment strategy.

An essential prerequisite to managing this day-to-day is to be aware of their role as platform orchestrators. In a platform ecosystem, we find actors that contribute with co-specialization, and complementarities, where they all have different roles in delivering and winning on this core value transaction. Therefore, each role as an integrator, complementor, and user must be managed accordingly and respected!

Read more about ecosystem roles in general here:

Since ecosystems are composed of firms organizing and depending on each other's activities or "firms interacting around a platform," protecting and respecting each business and its role is vital to keep the positive network effects from cross-platform cooperation and value delivery. The strength of a platform ecosystem is that it can coordinate external resources in its platform ecosystem without internalizing them. Ego-system "owners" tends to look for new revenue streams among platform contributors and internalize them. This break of trust may lead to an uproar among the followership group.

Third, Evaluate your leadership ambitions.

A critical capability you need to have as an organization is self-awareness. Is your claim for ecosystem leadership supported by the followership group? A key to any company's ecosystem strategy is identifying when it's worthwhile to compete for leadership and when followership is advisable.

Will your partners agree that they are better off as followers under your supervision and orchestration than they would be contending for leadership themselves? A "yes" indicates that you have a justifiable — though not guaranteed — claim for leadership. A "no" is a warning sign that your leadership ambitions may be unfounded. Looking for where these answers shift to "no" and "maybe" is the key to identifying the boundaries of your ecosystem, your ecosystem role, and your choice of partners.

Read more about beeing a component in an ecosystem:

Forth: Foster followership

As a platform ecosystem leader, you need to foster followership. Always create a balance between what you want to do with others and what other contributors are willing to do with you.

Never forget that a platform ecosystem and a platform business model are based on voluntary participation from all sides. Therefore, fostering followership is prerequisite to build the ecosystem in the first place. This balance between sides is different from the traditional "pipe businesses," where the customer side gets all the pipe company's attention, and the suppliers (of the value proposition) are left with little. Unfortunately, some of the leading exponents of ego-systems are businesses that stem from this "pipe model" and forget that an ecosystem is an entirely different entity.