Introduction
The business ecosystem is the concept that a business is part of a broader network, just like any product. Companies co-evolve technologies in a market environment around an innovation. They work cooperatively and competitively to support new products, satisfy customer needs and ultimately implement the next round of innovations.
Understanding Business Ecosystem
The ecosystem encourages both innovation and growth. It helps create new value propositions. It's a springboard for reaching more customers.
For example, your own company ecosystem includes businesses you outsource business functions to, organisations that provide you with funding, firms that provide the technologies you need to carry on your business, and suppliers of complementary goods that are used along with your own.
It even involves rivals and consumers when their actions and comments influence your own products or process development. The environment also includes institutions, such as regulatory agencies and media outlets that can impact the company in a less immediate but just as powerful way.
Importance of Business Ecosystems
The definition of an ecosystem for business is significant. This ecosystem involves all the organisations that can help you in:
- Raising awareness about consumer needs and desires
- Reaching new clients
- Making new products and services
- Doing business cheaper and easier
- Complying with regulators
- Giving guidance to your audience
- Hiring the right talent
Types of Business Ecosystems
Business environments express themselves in different ways. We can look at a business ecosystem from a macro view (country level or industry level), or a micro view (company level). Business environments may also be local (a city's neighbourhood) or global (Linux, and the entire ecosystem around it).
Macro-business ecosystems: A community of organisations lead the macro-business environment. This shows up to promote a change of legislation by programs, such as industry standards (Bluetooth) or lobbying. Their overall goal is specific and focuses on assisting a common interest sector or community of organisations.
Micro-business ecosystems: There are two main types of ecosystems at a micro-level, which are as follows:
Captive business ecosystem: One entity controls the whole network of organisations and people involved, and the big decisions are centralised.
Decentralised business ecosystem: It self-regulates the environment. The specific open source technology helps to coordinate collaborative market ecosystems. The BitTorrent network or the Blockchain networks are the examples for this case.
