Business is changing. As the world becomes more connected, technology develops rapidly and customers’ expectations escalate, businesses will find it increasingly difficulty to innovate, compete and grow as individual entities.
In this environment, organisations need to drive operational excellence, lead through increased complexity and volatility, enable collaboration across its functions, develop higher leadership excellence and manage amidst constant change while pursuing new possibilities.
Leaders are being challenged to find new ways to capitalise on the opportunities presented and the most radical shift may be a new view of what it means to collaborate.
The Collaboration Ecosystem
The term “ecosystem” is creeping into the business argot as thought leaders seek to articulate the seismic shift in the business landscape, drawing a distinction between traditional and emerging business models.
As the definition of economic value changes and consumer driven markets expand, businesses must understand and address the determinant factors for success including:
- Innovation and experimentation
- Rapid decision making and
- Robust implementation
Reinventing the Rules
Most businesses are not structured to provide the integrated, sophisticated and personalised experience being demanded by customers who are now more informed, have less patience and will readily switch brands.
If they continue with the status quo, businesses will be left behind. Only those that can rise to these challenging consumer demands will endure and succeed.
Astute leaders therefore recognise that collaboration will be a key success factor in how they interact with customers and will accelerate the need to reinvent the rules of competition and collaboration.
Accordingly business leaders believe that new business models will profoundly impact their industries.
These leaders are therefore identifying opportunities and competencies to leverage synergies and complementary strengths to drive value creation by:
- Embracing the the concept to of mutuality
- Identifying compatibilities and developing contracting arrangements to fill gaps and exploit opportunities
- Developing formal and informal collaboration among organisations with shared values, standards and goals
- Redefining value creation and value capture
Complexity will have an enormous influence on how collaboration ecosystems operate and will vary greatly from sector to sector. Organisations will need to pursue different strategies and develop new collaborative business models, depending on the context and markets in which they operate.
Taking Action
In this new age of collaboration businesses will need to take three specific actions:
- Change the organisational mindset to create value in entirely different ways
- Build the right connections
- Make the organisation more agile
Conclusion
If businesses are to remain relevant in this new era, they must differentiate and reinvent their value propositions and brands. For most businesses this can only be achieved by collaborating to create compelling experiences for customers.