The Ecosystem metaphor is the way for us to Highlight.
In the digital world relation between companies are becoming
both increasingly important and increasingly complex.
The term business ecosystem,
was first introduced by James Moore, to make the point,
that to understand the success of a company that is focused on innovation,
you need to look at how this term
relates to other companies in the production of innovation.
Ecosystem comes from biology.
Here it is known that spices is in
the same ecosystem are codependent on the well-being of each other,
and that the sustainable balance,
between the species have to exist.
Moore said that, innovative business cannot evolve in a vacuum.
It must attract resources of all sorts drawing on capital,
partners, suppliers, and customers to create co-operative networks.
Therefore, companies in industry that compete on digital innovations,
also can be said to exist in ecosystems.
An ecosystem analysis, focuses on the companies organizations or factors,
that are directly or indirectly affecting the company.
One concrete example that most of us are familiar with is Apple and the IOS ecosystem.
IOS is the operating system behind the iPhone,
iPad, iTV and so on.
When you use your iPhone,
you are interacting with something that was co-produced by ecosystem of actors,
component manufacturers, software firms,
app developers, content providers, and so on.
In Apple's ecosystem, there are many clusters for companies or functional groups,
to which Apple have similar relations.
In the broader ecosystem,
you can even include universities that provide Apple with software engineers,
and the financial markets that provide capital for investments.
But where does an ecosystem really end?
Well, that might be impossible to say,
but at some point, it is not meaningful to talk about dependencies anymore.
When you talk ecosystem,you should always think about the dependence system matters.
The point here is that the new innovation,
to be released in the next iPhone,
are not only dependent on what Apple do to innovate,
but it is all dependent on what all the other partners do.
For example, the fingerprint scanner Touch ID,
was only possible because the company that creates the iPhone chipset ARM,
developed the solution called Trust Sewn to securely store the fingerprint on the chip.
For Apple Pay, Apple uses NFC protocol for wireless interaction with payment terminals.
Without NFC or the terminal companies,
you will have nowhere to use Apple Pay.
So how do we transfer this to the finance industry?
In the financial industry,
they get a recession,
which is increased focus on innovation,
makes the ecosystem increasingly important.
Let's take a look at the ecosystem of Citibank,
a global consumer oriented bank.
Citi has launched the Citi Pay for Android,
a digital wallet that includes the possibility to install mobile payments.
Citi also enables the customers to use Android Pay in the US,
and Samsung Pay in Singapore and Australia.
But for now let us focus on Citi Pay and see how that works.
I'm going to focus here on the dependencies
and how they are part of an effective ecosystem.
Citi Pay enables mobile payments in store for MasterCard's master pass service.
Master pass in turn works because it can connect all the NFC protocol,
with Fin.X, a solution for mobile payments by mFoundry.
Phoenix; This is by some 850 banks and retailers,
including Bank of America, Capital One, Starbucks.
That these companies also use and enable Master Pass,
makes the technology accepted at more places.
So therefore to influence it to pay indirectly.
MFoundry is in turn owned by FIS,
a large general payment technology provider.
How good mFoundry and FIS are
developing the products will also affect how Citi Pay has grown.
Citi Pay can also be used for online purchases.
Then it's leveraging the mobile network to integrate
Master Pass because of Master Passes's online reach.
It can be used for online and inner payments in more than 33 countries.
So, we could go on here to explore
technology practices that mFoundry, FIS and MasterCard work with,
and we could add similar analyzers for
the collaboration with Android Pay, and Sumsang Pay.
We could also do similar analysis for all Citi bank products,
and find that they are equally complex collaboration behind interbank transfers,
ATM, credit cards, and other products.
But let us stop here and ask,
why do we care about this?
We care about these relations because,
they are so fundamental to the success of Citi bank.
If Master Pass become a success and conquers the world,
Citi Pay would be riding the wave of success.
If Master Pass becomes a success in turn depends on mFoundry and FIS.
If Master Pass doesn't become a success,
Citi Pay would also fade away.
So the really important question here is,
how do we know if the ecosystem around Master Pass will prosper?
To answer this question,
we can return to you James Moore who also develop a way to assess the ecosystem power.
Moore's assessment tool consists of three dimensions,
productivity, robustness and niche creation.
The first one productivity,
this is the ability to consistently transform technology,
and other raw materials of innovation into lower cost and new products.
We can measure this by return on invested capital.
How profitable are these different players in the multiples ecosystem?
We then have robustness;
this is the ability of ecosystem to survive an expected disruptions.
This can be measured by survival rate of
companies in the most robust ecosystem over time,
relative to other ecosystems.
Lastly, Niche creation: this is
the ability to be able to support a variety of
niche players to help the ecosystem absorb shocks,
and to encourage innovation.
We can measure this by the degree of differentiation in the ecosystem.
How different are the retailers that accept Master Pass?
It is difficult to pinpoint,
what constitute a healthy existence.
But if we put two more ecosystem next to each other,
we can say that, one is more likely to prosper over time.
Based on the health of the ecosystem,
we can decide if it is more or less attracted to it.
In addition, If you are influencer of the ecosystem,
it's a good idea to look back at most three categories to
see if you need to take action to improve the health of the ecosystem.
Because a Mastercard if all members of the Mastercard system suffer,
this will soon spill over a Mastercard.
I hope you were able to understand the key concept of the ecosystem,
and the forces that determine the health of an ecosystem.
In the next session, we will closely look at
the relations of two members of the same ecosystem,
and what it means that these relations are increasingly having
both elements of competition and collaboration at the same time.
