The Virtual Enterprise: The power of market-making platforms and ecosystems

With openness at the heart of the Virtual Enterprise, ecosystems have become the engine that drives performance and impact across economies. For enterprises battling dislocation and disruption, extended partner platforms can promote agility and resilience, and open new revenue opportunities. For businesses exploring such opportunities, ecosystems have been the essential vehicle for growth and expansion.

New IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) research reveals that the companies most focused on ecosystem engagement across 16 industries generated higher growth and more business value. During the pandemic, revenue growth captured by these ecosystem leaders outpaced that of others by 5 to 1.

Open platforms and ecosystems offer new avenues for growth, efficiency, and innovation.

But value does not automatically emerge from ecosystem engagement. If an enterprise continues to operate in old-style, analog ways, then potential is squandered. While most organizations now participate in and/or own a variety of platforms and have ecosystem strategies in place, those efforts can still deliver disappointing results. What’s required is an intentional effort to digitally transform the business.

Businesses are increasingly focused on openness

Enterprises must take the correct, considered steps to create and capture value from existing and new ecosystems. Only by appropriately cultivating a value-focused strategy—managing a portfolio of value opportunities and their risks—can an organization fully capitalize on market-making platforms and ecosystems’ transformative potential.

A closer look at ecosystem leaders

What does ecosystem leadership look like? There is no singular model, no one way to derive value from a platform and ecosystem. But leaders distinguish themselves by identifying the unique strategies and operational approaches that fit both their enterprises and the environments they operate in.

The IBV identified leading enterprises by assessing their success across 2 principal dimensions: their value capture expectations in an ecosystem and their maturity level within that ecosystem. Leaders demonstrate high ecosystem maturity and operate in a high-potential value capture environment.

Technology adopters that invest in ecosystems gained a revenue growth premium of 40%.

These organizations are not passive. With so much on the line, and so much already invested, a successful enterprise continually focuses on protecting and growing its status across both of those vectors.

These ecosystem leaders describe the source of their value as: “We own the customer relationship.” More than half of our surveyed leaders cite “strengthening existing strategic relationships” as a top success factor. They also increase investment in innovation that includes new products or services, and look to gain access to new industries, markets, and customers.

We found that successful leadership depends on 4 priorities:

Openness: 60% of leading participants report a significant shift from proprietary to open technologies.

Customer relationships: 74% point to deeper customer relationships as a key value driver.

Innovation: 49% say that innovation will be required to maximize value creation.

Agility: 42% identify a lack of organizational agility as one of the biggest impediments to success.

Download the report to see how the Virtual Enterprise leverages platforms and ecosystems to bring these priorities to life—and how they can drive better results for your business.