Ecosystem Thinking Design Helps Digital Transformation

The market platform paradigm is gaining popularity and huge opportunities are emerging in areas such as telecommunications, computing, logistics, mobility, financial services, aerospace and others where industry integration is crucial for efficiency and universality. In this platform space, we are not just providing solutions to our customers' problems, but going further to create a sustainable ecosystem. In such an ecosystem, it is possible to find the right leverage points to gradually help target business users transform their multiparty organisational structures from the inside out, the behavioural interactions of their employees and the way they work, and ultimately the digital transformation process of the entire business.

Using platform ecosystem thinking opens up new possibilities for enabling the development of organisations in two important ways: business model innovation and organisational development. Successful organisations tend to be those that are able to gain insight into the business factors that affect them while at the same time having a systematic governance model, both of which are key to ensuring the transformation and development of the whole system and the industry as a whole.
But how does this design process work, how do organisations work together in this design process, and how do different organisations work together in a higher level of systems thinking? What is the concept of "strategy" that fits into this new, inherently non-competitive landscape?

This workshop will illustrate how ecosystem thinking can be applied to explore the interactions and core requirements of core users and value creators in the context of the IBM HR talent transformation case study. The Stakeholder Map is used to identify potential opportunities, and then the Enterprise Design Thinking methodology, including Assumptions and questions, is used to define the vision. The Lean Ecosystem Experience Canvas and Entry Point Factor are then used to refine the experience processes within the ecosystem. Finally, by defining and validating the Minimum Viable Ecosystem, the ecosystem is empowered to organise itself to build a sustainable ecosystem that will help the digital transformation of the company.

Workshop content: 1.
1. Background of the workshop
1.1 Difference between platform strategy and product strategy
1.1.1 Product strategy: a point, a product to solve a single need of the enterprise
1.1.2 Platform strategy: a surface, to create an ecosystem that can be continuously operated and updated
1.2 The significance of building a platform for ecosystem thinking

2. The approach to building an ecosystem platform with case studies.
2.1 Discovery - identifying potential opportunities
Design tool: Stakeholder Map
2.1.1 Identifying stakeholders
2.1.2 Stakeholder grouping and association
2.1.3 Stakeholder Mining and Maintenance

2.2 Visioning - uncovering aspirations and values, defining system goals
Design tool: Enterprise Design Thinking
2.2.1 Assumptions and questions
- Collecting assumptions: exploring the unknown
- Defining high-risk and ambiguous options: assessing risks and priorities
- Output planning: user research methods
2.2.2 Hills (target hills): defining direction
2.2.3 Playbacks: bringing stakeholders into a safe space to tell stories and exchange feedback

2.3 Closing the loop of the experience - understanding how platform ideas 'resonate' with the hypotheses presented
Design tools: Lean Ecosystem Experience Canvas, Entry Point Factor
2.3.1 Lean Ecosystem Experience Canvas
- Customer Segments: Segmentation of customer groups
- Problem: The most important problem to solve
- Unique Value Proposition: The features and value points of the product
- Solution: The three functional problems that need to be solved
- Channels: Channels for finding customers
2.3.2 Entry Point Factor: The touch points and key influencing factors
- Identifying touchpoints
- Identify the key indicators that influence the touchpoints KPIs

2.4 Validation - Validating the highest risk assumptions
2.4.1 Minimum Viable Ecosystem
Definition and validation of the Minimum Viable Ecosystem by analogy with the MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
2.4.2 Feedback in Enterprise Design Thinking Loop
- Observe: observe consumers' needs and validate their expectations against their ideas
- Reflect: reflecting and consolidating the information received to form a solid plan for the appropriate perspective
- Make: turning imagination into reality

2.5 Getting to the ground - Designing to the ground
2.5.1 IBM Design System: collaborating across teams to create a consistent experience
2.5.2 Research and learning programmes: continuous innovation and value creation

3. Hands-on interaction
3.1 Virtual case exercises
3.2 Grouping of given cases to give platform building solutions
3.2 Case review and feedback

1、Introduction to the workshop: Background on Platform-Ecosystem Thinking
2、Case presentation：IBM Digital Talent Transformation
3、Concept Analysis: Stakeholder Map，Enterprise Design Think Toolkit - Assumption and question，Lean Ecosystem Experience Canvas 和 Entry Point Factor，Minimum Viable Ecosystem，Feedback
4、Hands-on interaction: virtual case exercises in groups
5、Q&A
6、Summary

1、User Experience Designer
2、To-B Product Manager
3、Interaction Designer

1、Harvesting a systematic thinking methodology for the design of To-B enterprise platform products
2、Understanding the differences between traditional enterprise product design and sustainable platform building thinking
3、A system of thinking that provides insight into user behaviour and identifies value points for companies in different customer scenarios
4、Design thinking for building enterprise-class platform products with case studies to help enterprises transform digitally throughout the process