MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How Healthy Is Your Business Ecosystem?

Companies that start or join successful business ecosystems — dynamic groups of largely independent economic players that work together to create and deliver coherent solutions to customers — can reap tremendous benefits. In the startup phase, ecosystems can provide fast access to external capabilities that may be too expensive or time-consuming to build within a single company. Once launched, ecosystems can scale quickly because their modular structure makes it easy to add partners. Moreover, ecosystems are very flexible and resilient — the model enables high variety, as well as a high capacity to evolve. There is, however, a hidden and inconvenient truth about business ecosystems: Our past research found that less than 15% are sustainable in the long run.

About the Author

Ulrich Pidun is a partner and director at Boston Consulting Group and a fellow at the BCG Henderson Institute.

Martin Reeves (@martinkreeves) is a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group and chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute.

Edzard Wesselink is a principal at Boston Consulting Group and an ambassador at the BCG Henderson Institute.

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