Platforms and Ecosystems
Sometimes when we look at things from a different vantage point we see things which we don't see from other vantage points.
Platform
The essence of a platform is this: A platform is an enabling foundation that others can build on.
A platform is a shared foundation of rules and resources that allows independent actors to build, connect, and create value on top of that platform.
The notion of a platform exists for computer systems, for economic systems, and for institutional systems.
Larry Keeley is a director of Deloitte Consulting LLP and president and co-founder of its innovation practice, Doblin. He is a strategist who has worked over three decades to develop more effective innovation methods.
In a Business Week article, "The Greatest Innovations of All Time", Larry Keeley points out that most of the greatest inventions of all time were "platforms." He defines a platform as:
broad capabilities that have the potential to cut across industries, markets, and applications. Platforms often have some proprietary capabilities at the core, but not always. Indeed, it is common for platforms to integrate many otherwise ordinary ideas into a whole that is collectively remarkable.
He goes on to say that "A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
In his article several platforms are discussed, we will use the example of "limited liability" which is familiar to most business people to help provide a sense for what a platform is.
Corporations and limited liability partnerships provide a means of removing personal risk from an individual which participates within a business venture so the individual will not have to risk everything when if their companies make a mistake.
This platform of "limited liability" has allowed large corporations and partnerships to exist which allow the separation of liability from ownership. This has allowed large amounts of capital to flow from individuals to companies and ventures, which would take large organizations, to exist.
Limited liability is a platform because it provides:
- a legal foundation (owners aren’t personally liable),
- an interface (the corporate form),
- a value surface (risk pooling, entrepreneurship, scalable enterprise).
Limited liability doesn’t produce goods and it has nothing to do with computers. It enables people to take risks they otherwise wouldn’t. It is a platform for enterprise formation.
Ecosystem
The essence of an ecosystem is this: An ecosystem is a self‑sustaining network of interdependent platforms, actors, and value flows.
An ecosystem is a dynamic environment formed by multiple platforms, participants, and value flows that mutually depend on each other and evolve together. An ecosystem is a system formed by organisms in interaction with their environment.
Relationship Between Platform and Ecosystem
And so, at it's essence or at its core; this is the relation between a platform and an ecosystem:
- Platform: an enabling foundation; framework and rules; others build on; enables value creation.
- Ecosystem: the interdependent environment formed when many platforms and actors co‑create value; enables value flow.
The following metaphor tries to explain the relationship between a platform and an ecosystem using the notion of a holon. Remember that a holon is something that is simultaneously a whole in and of itself, as well as a part of a larger whole. And so, a platform is a holon that enables. An ecosystem is a holarchy of interdependent holons.
- Platforms: enabling holons
- Ecosystem: the holarchy they form together; holarchy is the nested interdependent structure; the whole of the ecosystem is more than the sum of its parts
Each platform is a whole (a complete framework and rule‑system) and a part (of a larger environment). The ecosystem is the coherent system that emerges from their interactions within the environment.
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