Agents of the Business Ecosystems Should Relentlessly Act in Their Own Self-interest
In my understanding and belief, the misconception or missing parts is that we still interpret the ecosystems based on the current conventional paradigm of the western developed world which are individualism, competition, greed, resistance to change and such that.
So, what is Ecosystem?
The word was coined in the 1930s by British botanist Arthur Tansley
“A localized community of living organisms interacting with each other and their particular environment of air, water, mineral soil, and other elements. These organisms influence each other, and their terrain; they compete and collaborate, share and create resources, and co-evolve; and they are inevitably subject to external disruptions, to which they adapt together.”
In the context of a digital world; “Business ecosystems are dynamic and co-evolving communities of diverse actors who create new value through increasingly productive and sophisticated models of both collaboration and competition. “
Real Meaning of Ecosystem
However, which I fervently believe, ecosystems are, in nature or in business -doesn’t matter, the complex systems that must dynamically optimize across systems and most importantly they are characterized by unpredictability and complexity. System scientists call this organizing principle “chaotic behavior”. In ecological terms, a small change to an ecosystem may result in unpredictable and catastrophic events later in time [Graham, 2014]. You can review this
You cannot control or orchestrate complex systems easily by predicting the future or being proactive or reactive. This issue is crystal clear with my painful hands-on experiences. Also, existing all kind of predictive analysis tools is doomed to failure because it would be well possible inevitable and unpredictable changes to be occurred any time because of the V’s of Big Data: Velocity, Volume, Value, Variety, and Veracity in today’s growing digital world.
“Complexity in Nature is universal. You cannot describe any complex system such as an ecosystem by doing mathematical models, by simply using your logic, by soliciting the consensus of the public, or by naturalists sitting around the table at a meeting called to decide on what to do about an ecological situation.” [Graham, 2014].
The other problem is that we always produce or design solutions by guessing the future. This gives us false-positive because today’s (temporary-limited) solutions would become tomorrow’s problems.
Even if we address to more efficient, more renewable, more recyclable, more profitable in the things and processes, but still those are the individual metrics, binary choices, and oversimplified relationships of a limited system being in a struggle to engage, contribute and survive yet. This limited system inhibits the co-creativity or ecosystems [Deluca, 2016].
Spiral Paradigm
We need a spiral progress in the bases of open innovation, in the start-up spirit by starting with very small quick steps, endless learning as you move, endless leveraging as you advance, endless adapting as you transform, and endless evolving as producing and performing.
We are still missing or not properly addressed the resource allocation and optimization, and workload management/orchestration for a decentralized, heterogeneous, multi-layered systems for multi-tenant and multi-stakeholders’ environments, again the meaning of ecosystems. We are still attracted to the GAFA Hub.
AI Domains & Algorithms
Nowadays, AI also becomes the buzzword. As we, humans, are good at thinking pattern, non-linear approaches, creativity, iterative hypotheses, computers may be promoted, in a very close period, to make benefits of preparing the way for insights and decision making through the issues that their best at scale, computation and volume.
Therefore, we need to identify domains where the intersection of human’s specific capabilities together with the artificial agents can leverage the best results. Otherwise, we’d simply have creatures (lower forms of intelligence) that just sit there idly until someone gives them a set of instructions to follow — much like existing modern computers/robots.
Last Words
As conclusion, Business ecosystems and/or MVPs (Minimum Viable [Enterprise] Platform) cannot be established facilitating positive long-term change by predefined rules, or well-suited tools or business models.
If we talk about decentralization, the agents that will form an ecosystem should relentlessly act in their own self-interest and find a way into an ecosystem and manages to survive and thrive with a unique behavior results from a network.
