Business Eco-System

Visualise your Business Eco-System by modelling actors and their relationships in a network to better understand their roles, activities and strategies. Get to know which tools we use to do so and how we like to use them on this page.

Content

1. Overview

A Business Eco-System is a network of actors including suppliers, distributors, customers, dealers, competitors, government agencies and so on that are involved in the delivery of a specific business, product or service through both competition and cooperation. Actors affect and are affected by other actors, creating a constantly evolving relationship and exchange. They all have their own strategies, play a certain role (behaviour) and perform differently. Each actor must be flexible and adaptable in order to survive, as in a biological eco-system. In Business Design, we define the following actors:

  • Customer

  • User

  • Partner (R&D)

  • Partner (Delivery & logistics)

  • Dealer

  • Bank

  • Government agency

  • Server (IT)

  • Sensor (IT)

  • Different roles of organisations (e.g. Marketing, Support) etc.

  • Business Design roles

To express the relationship between actors, we define the following exchange items:

  • Product

  • Service

  • Money

  • Right

  • Reputation

  • Credit

  • Knowledge

  • Data / document / message / e-mail etc.

  • Software

  • Trust

  • Fun

2. Layout

This example illustrates how different actors and exchange items as magnetic shapes can be used to visualise a Business Eco-System on a whiteboard.

If you need actors and exchange items as magnetic shapes, please drop us a line: support@orangehills.de

Example Business Design Ecosystem Business Eco-System Stickers

3. Usage Scenarios

Analysing today's business environment to identify ideas on how to influence the system for your benefit

4. Instructions for Coaches

  1. Define key actors of your Business Eco-System

  2. Describe strategies, roles and performance metrics for each actor

  3. Define relationships (unidirectional, bidirectional) and mark them with arrows between actors

  4. Describe the relationships between actors with exchange items

  5. Identify hazards, errors, pains, process interruptions and brainstorm how you can influence the system for your benefit