Total Innovation Podcast

16. Paul Hobcraft: Building effective ecosystems

• Season 2 • Episode 16

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Paul Hobcraft is a globally recognized expert in business ecosystem innovation and design, ranked among the top 50 global thinkers in Ecosystems and Renewable Energies. With extensive international experience spanning Asia, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Paul helps organizations navigate the complexities of ecosystem-driven innovation and unlock new growth opportunities.

Drawing from his hands-on experience leading global businesses across consumer goods, specialty chemicals, and industrial products, Paul now serves as a strategic advisor helping companies harness the power of business ecosystems, collaborative innovation, and co-creation. His practical approach combines deep ecosystem expertise with real-world business savvy, enabling organizations to stay ahead in rapidly evolving markets.

Based on his 14 years in Asia and leadership roles across multiple continents, Paul brings unique cross-cultural insights to help businesses design and implement successful ecosystem strategies. As a "transition to business ecosystems and innovation advocate," he guides organizations through the challenges of ecosystem adoption while fostering sustainable innovation and growth.

Brought to you by The Infinite Loop – Where Ideas Evolve, Knowledge Flows, and Innovation Never Stops.

Welcome to another episode of the Total Innovation podcast where we explore transformative ideas, strategies, and solutions shaping the future of innovation and planet Earth.

Today, I am truly excited to welcome to the podcast a renowned thought leader and self described innovation journeyman whose career has spanned decades and continents. Still looking young, though. His journey into the world of innovation began over twenty years ago. And since then, he has dedicated himself entirely to understanding, developing, and advancing innovation in all its forms.

From championing innovation, capacity, and capabilities to pioneering work in ecosystem thinking, and his contributions have earned him recognition from organizations and institutions worldwide. Through his research, advisory work, institutions worldwide.

Through his research, advisory work, and publishing on platforms like LinkedIn, as well as his own websites, he's become a leading advocate for ecosystem driven innovation.

Beyond this thought leadership, his personal and professional journey is one of remarkable depth. He's held senior management roles across global organizations, managing turnarounds, leading start ups, and overseeing significant operational transformations in regions across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, basically the world. Right, Paul? Since trans transitioning to advisory work, he's focused on mentoring organizations and individuals, helping them embed innovation into their DNA and designing ecosystems that drive transformative change.

And today, we're gonna be diving deep into that topic of partner ecosystems, how interconnected networks of partners, collaborators, and stakeholders are reshaping industries and driving long term value.

And with that, it is an honor to welcome today's guest to the podcast. Welcome, Paul Hopcraft.

Thank you, Simon, for such a a glowing introduction. I really appreciate it, and I look forward to having a nice conversation with you as we always do.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I'm gonna draw on all those years of, experience and wisdom, Paul, as we as we go today from our The the the the gray hairs are falling out.

So, wisdom is obviously going with those gray hairs.

Not in the slightest. Not in the slightest. So as I said in my intro, right, you've you've had a breadth of experience. You've been working across this very nebulous innovation space for a little while now.

Right? And, you've got the bruises, I'm sure, to tell of and and the successes along the way for, for the work that you've done. And you've chosen in more recent times, and I've been following this very closely in our discussions online and others, to dig into the topic of innovation ecosystems and, I guess, what more more specifically, partner ecosystems. Can you can you talk a bit about why why you've why you've chosen to focus there in in this very nebulous space that you could go anywhere with, really?

Yes.

For me, innovations in coaching, in capability, in building capacity, I've been doing that for a long time. And I somebody was saying the other day that, you know, nothing's changed over the last ten years or whatever else. And, I replied and said, do we continue to flog the dead horse, or should we begin to think in a very different way? And I do think taking, you know, innovation and putting ecosystems onto it really does open you up to say, my thinking has to move out of a company, one individual company, into a much broader network of companies. And to do that, I've got to start thinking differently. And ecosystems are, for me, the place that people start needing to think so they can start collaborating and cocreating.

I described upfront this aspect of visionary, and I think this is an awkward shift for companies, right, in terms of trying to trying to think about it. There's lots that's structured around them in in ways that makes this difficult for them to start to to operationalize, and we're gonna talk later about some good examples of it. Before we do that, maybe let's just get a little bit into definition because, you know, we're leading with something new. And there are there are there are examples out there of of ecosystems that have gone well, but let's just define it. Right? What what do we mean by an ecosystem? What do we mean by a partner ecosystem, and how does that differentiate from standard partnerships that organizations might be familiar with?

Let's let's go with the partner ecosystems versus partnerships.

I think what partnerships do is they're a prelude into partner ecosystems.

Now let me explain what I mean by that.

Partnerships are very specific, very focused on a problem to re resolve, like a supply chain problem.

They also do have a tendency to be a net zero sum game, and I believe ecosystems need to be with a win win.

So you begin to progress from that net zero into more win wins.

It has a much longer term aspect to it, partner ecosystems.

So partnerships are more project related, more system related in the immediate or in the the medium term.

There is also a scale difference. You're not really you're scaling up between two partners or three partners. When you're dealing with ecosystems, you've got to deal with the magnitude of scale because of the diversity of the people you hopefully are gonna attract into your ecosystems.

So the complexity is broader, and it's a much deeper dive you need to do to go into partner ecosystems.

You need to build that network of partners, and you don't go to the one that you naturally think, oh, that is my partner. You search for the ones that are gonna give you a different viewpoint of business or a different opportunity to get into a a new market or to give you a different scope of of operating or or whatever. So it gives also a much broader innovation potential, which I think is really important from partner ecosystem point of view. It gives you market reach. It gives you potential expansion.

It enables you to resource share in a more collective and more intelligent way, and it gives you a greater chance for value creation.

And I think that applies to all of the way I see ecosystems taking place. So as one goes down that thinking of partner ecosystems, you can say, well, all ecosystems need to try to apply that type of criteria.

Yeah. In thinking about this, and I know you and I have had a a few discussions on on this in real life and over various forms of media as well because I had a slight problem with the word ecosystem. I I believe in it. And as you know from a business perspective, under some of your stewardship and guidance as well, we started to to adopt the language more.

And it isn't because I don't believe in it. It's because I have a problem with, I guess, two things. One is adopting turns from other areas that I just don't see being systematically introduced into the business world. The business world likes to take these words and use them, but they're meaningless.

Right? And so networks, and you said it earlier, kind of interconnected networks and value chains make sense to me. Ecosystems sound very esoteric. And if you look at the definition of an ecosystem as a dynamic network of interconnected entities that interact with and depend on each other to sustain their collective existence and growth.

It's a nice metaphor for what we might like to see in business. The reality of it is obviously very far removed from that when you think about competition regulation and all the other stuff that comes into how businesses operate versus the reality of those things. And so I believe squarely that we need to get there. But what's holding companies back, do you think?

Because most are a long way away from this, which is why it's so visionary, some of this thinking.

Yeah. I mean, I've struggled in the last twelve months to get across as much as I would like to the message about partner ecosystems and their value. And you then have to say, well, let me step back and think what what is holding a company back. And you've got a whole host of things which are, holding them back in other areas as well, which is have they got the internal capabilities and the skills and the flexibility of mind to actually adjust to this different world that our ecosystems argues for.

Can they get a greater alignment and vision with a number of other companies, when they sometimes don't get alignment and vision within their own company.

That's a problem.

Their culture and their mindset, when you come up against another company that has got a different culture or a different mindset, it's gonna be clashing. And that makes the CEO or leadership very, very mindful and very, very thoughtful. You've got resource allocation constraints running in companies at the moment, but you've got a lot of fear. When you open yourselves up, when you move beyond open innovation into ecosystem open innovation, you're suddenly thinking, oh my god.

What am I gonna do with my IP? What am I gonna do with my data sharing? What am I gonna do with my security? All these things come crowded in.

And when you haven't even mastered it in your own company, which so many haven't, it becomes a huge barrier to move forward.

Now what is going to compel companies to move forward is they've got to move away from risk aversion because I believe we are heading towards a more volatile world in the next twelve to to forty eight months at least.

And we've got to recognize that we've got a short term focus, of course, that we've got to say, well, how do we trim our costs? How do we most probably don't go into new ventures?

But you could go into shared new ventures. So you can say what partnerships have taught me is a shared venture.

How do I open up that shared venture into something that's gonna mean I can do better risk sharing, better resource allocation, better integration, greater diversity of opinion. So all of these things are potentially ahead of you, if you start thinking in a more ecosystem mindset than in a straightforward my own company mindset.

Within that very optimistic and joyous outlook of more uncertainty and more more chaos, I, and I and I'd I'd tend to agree, although the the optimist in me hopes that that we're not and we're moving into calmer waters, at least in certain in certain ways. What is it that makes you believe that ecosystems are so profoundly important? Now given all that complexity, given the fact that all that the that the structures are almost set against them. Right? Like, how do you how do you how do you weigh against that? Like, okay. I need to get out of risk, but my risk is increasing because volatility is, you know, increasing versus, you know, there's a solution here, but I barely understand it, and I'm not set up to achieve it.

I I think you've gotta start as I say, the whole mindset does change with this, and it's gonna take you time to think through what that will mean as you've just rightly said. We live in a we live in a in an environment. We don't live in just a given one space, our own space. We've got to interact. We've got to build out. We've got to establish relationships, not only with other companies that can provide us with new opportunities and new markets and new gains and new diversity of opinion. But we've gotta recognize that our customer is changing, and they're changing very radically and very fast.

And I think this is where you could say the ecosystems has got to adjust to. We've got more chance to get data. We've got more chance to interrogate and to get closer to our customers than ever before.

How are we gonna interpret that? Are we gonna interpret that in an island or in our own silo? Are we gonna break that out into into a broader environmental one to say, look. I don't have to take on the world, but what I need to do is I need to expand out and recognize that, you know, I may be a tree in a forest, but I've gotta start looking around and say, are there other trees around me that is gonna support me?

And how do they support me? How do they nourish my roots? How do they actually give me a bit more sunlight? How do they give me a chance to be a little bit different?

So if you start thinking ecosystems from a natural perspective initially, bring it back into a business, I think you can begin to move comfortably through ecosystems.

That's why I have gone more into mentoring and coaching and advising on this to bring people through this this significant change. Because I think they are gonna have to do it, because they're they're recognizing more and more companies that they're not getting growth.

They are losing people.

They are in a very different environment where AI is gonna start becoming very, very strong in the way they're being influenced, I would far rather take a broader outlook on the world so AI has a much better chance to actually give you the values that you're looking for.

Yeah. I think and I'm wondering I was debating as you were talking there because there's a number of ways you could take this conversation, around I agree with all those points, and I I hope that we can start to move more and more examples. As I said, there are some. It's just not they're few and far between in terms of that.

But thinking about how do you how do you start to know where to focus to unlock value. Right? So, like, there's this question of how do you unlock value through partner ecosystems, but, also, where's the right place? Right?

Not everything lends itself naturally to an ecosystem.

And so if you buy into the principle, like, I guess, what are the what are the levers that you might be thinking about pulling which might direct you to know where to go? And I was gonna anchor that slightly for fear of dancing us around in two different threads here. I apologize.

I know that you've you've anchored a lot of your thinking around ecosystems on an area that's close to your interest in heart around the energy transition.

And parts of the energy transition lend themselves, some may say more naturally, to ecosystems because there's a lot of shared problems that are quite low down Maslow's pyramid of needs that just need to set the sector up foundationally. Right? It's not gonna get the same support that perhaps historically that sector was given. And therefore, if it wishes to thrive and exist, it needs to come together in a more cooperative and, collaborative way even as competition to try and resolve some of the foundational challenges that exist within that. I don't know where which bit of that do you wanna pull on, but there's, like, how do we unlock value and how do we know where to focus?

I've chosen the energy transition because I believe it does give me the greater validation of why ecosystems are so valuable.

Let's take hydrogen as one example very, very briefly.

Is everybody gonna build a different type of hydrogen solution?

Is everybody going to actually push one, which is reliant on oil and gas or is reliant on renewable energy?

Are you gonna build monster hydrogen solutions? Are you gonna build one for local communities? Are you gonna build ones for individual companies?

How the whole thing says screams ecosystem.

I have to think through this. Then you've got the global aspect, which is are you going to continue to allow a Africa or a Middle East or an Asia to be excluded from a lot of what we've been doing from a European or from American point of view. Because if we are going to breathe the same air, we all breathe the same air, and that same air needs to have clean air is what the argument is.

To achieve that, if you take hydrogen as the example, you take solar, you take wind, or even even if you take oil and gas arguably, You've got to change what the planet is doing so ecosystems is the natural environment for energy, in the fact of your thinking and where you're going.

So if we were to I I I definitely agree. And I think trying to apply that into other areas is is maybe a I think you have done it in various places, and I I like the thematic of energy. You know, it's a space we do a lot of work in as well.

I think it can apply more broadly as as as I'm as I'm sure you do as well. I'm trying to start to frame that into other sectors, perhaps even at a societal level. I was having an interesting discussion earlier today on this around cities and and healthy cities and smart cities and other things.

Again, these are all ecosystems. They're all they're all they're all pieces of a complex system that, that that thrive on it. How do we how do we think about so we've got these partner ecosystems.

You're using the acronym PE earlier and confusing a little bit, but we'll we'll we'll so we'll stick with, rather private equity. We've got partner ecosystems.

Okay.

Alright. We've got, we've got, what are the levers for unlocking value? Right? What are the structures that that people might be thinking of, and how do we align those to business strategy and what's important to the company?

Yeah. Let let's come back to the article that has, you know, triggered our conversation or this opportunity, which is how do we unlock value through partner ecosystems? And we have four pillars there. The pillar was revenue growth and market expansion.

There was innovation and competitive advantage, operational efficiency and cost saving, and brand equity and customer loyalty. There's no difference than if we were doing it from just a pure innovation point of view or whatever else. It is moving across and saying, what does the ecosystems add that's gonna make those different and unlock them? And I've I I look at it in this way. We can enhance our capabilities by working with more people and getting more opinion and getting more knowledge and more intelligence together.

We can accelerate innovation simply by the very nature that we're into broader networks, and we can begin to look at how do we get revenue, how do we get market expansion, how do we make a competitive advantage.

Ecosystems do lend themselves to distinct value propositions.

So the people you bring into your ecosystem, tend to lock in, not lock in from the point of excluding other people out, but by the very nature of what they are bringing together and pulling together as their knowledge and their experiences, they are giving you a distinct competitive advantage that you might not get on your own. There's there's got there's a greater scalability that one can get through these four pillars by applying them on an ecosystem manner. One can get a much longer term perspective and out of that impact. If one basically takes these four pillars and say, I am going to work not so much in my short term as an individual company, I'm gonna construct a vision.

I want to change something, be it the health care industry, be it industrial automation, be it whole host of areas which are broad in scope that need greater collaboration because we need to break those down. And you can you begin to then move into how do you bring in technology and its robustness in your own, environment?

You can spend so much. When you bring in a number of other people, you get a broader ability to use technology. You can tap into somebody that's got a greater expertise in data analysis or, data interpretation or how you build your technology.

And you're getting out of this unlocking value a more strategic, impact. So I think you can get by unlocking these four ecosystems, and we touch really on examples, so maybe we go into that now. But the value needs are how do you bring those how do you bring those in to get that expansion of your thinking into partner ecosystems or ecosystems? So that's how I see that ask on how it was written?

Yeah. And and and I agree. And I think that alignment of those four, pillars back to things that are extraordinarily tangible to businesses, because things can feel very far away. Right?

I actually think there's real evidence to show that, you know, this can drive quite short term value as well as medium or longer term value from an organizational perspective. So I like that I like that framing. Before we get into some of the good examples, and we will get there, I thought we could we could just look at if someone's interested in this, right, they're looking to build one, the next first step isn't very logical. So what are some of the key considerations to to, you know, to how to go about building this?

Does they start building their own their own network, building their own platforms? Like, what are your thoughts around it?

I wanna keep it simple for people, and that is to say, how do you extend beyond your existing reach?

So you use that as your first area to say, do I need to extend?

How would I extend?

Who do I need to extend with?

And what will that possibly give me? And keep asking all the time, why? Why am I doing this? Why do I think it's good? Get yourself comfortable that naturally, it begins to form that we need either partner ecosystems or ecosystem thinking and design.

Then you basically say, well, I've been innovating on my own or I've been innovating with one or two people.

How do I open that up and make that more cooperative or co innovative in my in my thinking? How can I, you know, learn from pushing that out slowly by participating a little bit more with a few more people, by learning from that, by sort of saying, oh, I've got either a lot more skills myself than I thought I had, or I realize I don't have enough skills and capabilities?

And that's a big before you step into, I wanna go ecosystems because then it's a great place to go. And then I think the other two ones are I do believe we are, as I say, in an adjusting changing environment. And much as I see it maybe a little more darkly than maybe you do, I do share optimistic views as well on it because either I I think ecosystems are one of the optimistic views I'm sharing here.

And it's how do we learn to collaborate within that. You know, I I read more and more people as they come on and feel more confident with themselves. They tell you about failure.

And I think organizations and individuals in organization should talk a lot more about that failure and not just say, here's my scar and here's my wound, which we've all got, but here's my opportunity that somebody could reach in and say, here's the way I would mentor you. Here's the way I would coach you, number one, or here's the way we overcame that. And why don't we actually come together?

Because maybe there's something here that's gonna give us value. So keeping it relatively simple, not going for the big, I must go ecosystem straight away. I would go step by step, pace by pace.

One of the big challenges as you start to build these, and, you know, I've been involved in quite a number now, is who's controlling what. Right? Because you want people to come across and collaborate, but somewhere, there's an instigator who probably drives this. And so how do you how do we maintain the right level of trust and collaboration in these ecosystems, and how do you see them actually practically working? And from first hand experience, it's it's complicated.

I think I think another constraint we've got at the moment with ecosystems is people believe they must be the orchestrator.

They must be the one that takes control, shapes things. And by the very nature of doing that, they're actually excluding a lot of opportunity.

They are you know, they don't wanna invest time in discussing it. They've got a clear view of what they want to do for their business, and you come along with me. Well, that's an e that's a partnership.

That's not a partner ecosystem. Well, partner ecosystem, I believe, needs a far greater third party. I think it needs what I call an unbiased arbiter.

And that is somebody that that can say, hey. Look. You guys, you know, yeah, back it out, work it out, but I can provide you a number of value aspects, not just a platform because, you know, go to AWS or or or go to Microsoft if you just want a technology platform.

I'm giving you the intelligence behind a way for you to move in ecosystems. Let me summarize what I think those could be.

Is it has to be well functioning. It has to be proven. Is it a technology platform that already works and already be in place for a long time? It gives people trust.

It gives people confidence, number one. You know, as you get into more collective intelligence and diverse perspectives, how do you bring that into a into a more neutral place, a neutral environment where it can be interpreted by somebody in an unbiased way, and then you can say, take it for what it's got. If you wanna put it through your own AI system or you wanna put it through your own collective group, that's great. I'm giving you, I think, added value by putting that collective intelligence in place to be able to give you that.

I think I can give you resource pooling, which you don't have at the moment. I can give you access to a network of people that quite frankly are so diverse and so crazy sometimes that you might actually be surprised, but not crazy at the idea, but just surprised where the idea came from for you to be able to say, we could build on that, but you don't then take it away and say thank you very much. I'm on that. You can bring it in and say within that diversity of networks, we are gonna keep bringing in this this lot of collaborative networking people that you've got.

How do you cross pollinate?

You know, by coming onto a third party that's got a broader viewpoint of dealing in health, dealing in water, dealing in energy, and saying, I can give you good examples of what they've done. And I can put those through a a funnel or a machine, and I can come out and say, why shouldn't you in your industry be thinking that way that the water system is working or something like that? It's a I never even thought of that. That's hugely valuable. You don't get that if you want to impose your thinking on onto the team.

I think, you know, just getting a more open dynamic network of people, It's a bit buzzy, but I think it's a great place, and you need to continue to sort of convey that. So that open sharing.

How do you build out innovation? I think anybody that shuts out other people's innovation and what they've done, what they've achieved, and what they've failed to achieve is going to be stuck in their own world. So we've got to come out of that. Third parties can nudge. Third parties can bring it out.

And I do think by having a whole bunch of highly good proven collaborative tools in place is actually aim enabling five or six companies to say, I've got my favorite tool. I've got my favorite tool is to say, well, actually, these are good tools, but we think this tool is proven because we've got a track record in it. So I believe there's a very strong argument for accelerating third party ecosystem management.

Obviously, I'm gonna champion that all day long, and I, you know, I I I, from firsthand experience, have tried a variety of different different tracks on all of this. I do think it comes back to and, again, it they've I think they can feel quite big and esoteric, these things. And to a degree, you do need a varied collection of different actors, perspectives, budget, and problem holders within, this as well as solution providers from a range of different different, backgrounds.

But in reality, once you start getting into the work to be done, they cluster into smaller groups typically. Right? Because not everyone's gonna have the shit same shared problem or be willing to come to the table to work around that. And maybe if we dig into we've got a few minutes left on on on this now. Some of the examples of what have worked, and, you know, I might interject with a couple of couple of points from my own side as well.

I've done this in two ways.

I've been looking to say what has people seem to have got success out of from partner ecosystems? So, arguably, are these templates, which is, you know, number one is obviously is sustainability. How do I actually move my business forward? I need other people in it, so I need to think about partner ecosystems from a sustainable point of view. Number two, more and more people are saying, how do I regenerate?

How do I in an agricultural environment, how do I work with people that wanna regenerate their land, regenerate their their sort of the crops that they're doing? How do they actually so regeneration, I think, is gonna come out stronger and stronger and stronger.

Thirdly, there's a loyalty, to partner ecosystems. How do I build a more loyal, group of people in our partner ecosystems?

Then, how do I simply get more association with what I want to do, make it more aspirational?

And let's now break that down into good examples.

Patagonia, which is a wonderful company, or Nestle, which is another company, are all applying regeneration practices into agriculture. So Nestle have recognized that, by having coffee that is grown in a given way, you know, it's gonna give them a a potential to offer a bio coffee, a better flavor coffee, etcetera, etcetera that grows their business. But they do do it with one grower. They've gotta do it on a magnitude of of the world on where they buy their coffee. So they've got themselves a partner ecosystem, which is a regeneration one, same as Patagonia does. Siemens or Schroeder are more into industrial application.

Siemens is turning themselves into a a digital enterprise and working alongside their hundred thousand customers and saying, how many of you will come inside, and use what we've learned?

And we've put now an API on that. So there's a a you can use that and apply that into your own industrial application.

Their so their whole marketplace has expanded significantly.

Schroeder, on the other hand, have focused very much on their alliance program, much stronger. So they said, I I need to do that. Then you've got Philips or you've got GE from a health care point of view. They're doing far more diagnostic capabilities.

So they're going to hospitals. They're going to government institutions. They're going to whole host of different types of organization that can give them that ability. So they're investigating the digital twin. They're investigating, all sorts of, the metaverse and how they can work that so people can say, when I look at a a health care problem of an individual, where can I draw down information?

How do I apply to that to that individual so I can make a better diagnostic for an individual, or I can apply a broader diagnostic capability as a government to actually encourage it forward. You've got Starbucks as a good example. They've built out loyalty programs, and a host of other companies that are doing those. Now are those partnerships?

Yes. But they're actually getting more closer to their customers through those loyalty programs, which gives them a broader ecosystem to be able to feedback and understand what they're doing. They're experimenting with their their coffees. They're experimenting with this.

Then you've got Microsoft. You've got AWS. You've got Apple. They're all interpartner ecosystems in a very big way.

I am surprised.

Microsoft get ninety five percent of their business from partner ecosystems.

Mhmm.

Ninety five percent. Now okay. Oh, yeah. They're technology. They're a technology company. But, yes, but you need them in your own ecosystem.

They've got terrific experience to provide you not just technology solutions, but ability to avoid this mistake or go down that wrong path. You've got a favorite of mine, which is Alibaba.

Alibaba built their own huge ecosystem of offerings, And they've gone out there, and they've offered it to the to the Chinese market and said, you buy from us. Okay. You could say that's a lock in, but it's given a huge opportunity for people to say, I can do one shop one stop shopping through Alibaba because I can go across to this part of their business, that part of their business. So that's loyalty, that's integration, that's whatever. And then they've got another good example, which is Unilever.

They've got a far higher emphasis now on how do we make our business sustainable, how do we focus on climate as an important part of our messaging, and how do we go back and work with our suppliers, work with our producers, work with our customers to be able to bring everybody into a more cohesive understanding of what sustainability can give us and what climate challenges are going to be needed to be overcome. So you've got a host of good examples of big companies. And then if you look underneath those, and I'm not gonna do that now, is the the next tier. There are tiers of of ecosystem management.

One could go underneath those. That's for sure. But those are pretty good examples. Another one at the moment, that I'm in a conversation with was with Bosch.

Bosch are turning their management on its head at the moment.

Those platforms, ecosystems, they're not talking anymore about a product that can deliver a a you know, the famous drill bit, which was the job to be done that has been, you know, flogged together for nearly twenty years. They're saying, we need to find growth platforms, and we've got to say we're we've got intelligence in our in our marketplace. We've got capabilities. We've got this. But there's now reform and rethink in a growth position or an ecosystem position because we've got, like Siemens, like Schroeder, we've got capability that we can actually, you know, outsource and provide and bring other people in to actually say, we can come along with you on this path. It's it's changing.

It is it is evolving. I think there's some nice examples in there. I I I think in what I would like to see more examples where they're a little bit less platformed by the large brand at the top of it and more, as we suggested through some of this dialogue and conversation, a little bit more egalitarian in their in their construct. So back to this platform neutrality and the the orchestrator being somewhat independent.

Right? Like, you can't I'd struggle to argue that Nestle is independent in in its ecosystem or or others. Right? And so I think that they're good examples.

Don't get me wrong. But I think if we can find ways to get true cooperation and collaboration happening where there isn't the the obvious, cheerleader or conductor at the top of it who's the budget holder and the big brand that's driving that. So what's their own interest?

And we can and we can and we can drive through that, Simon, quite quickly, which is look around Europe. We have a hydrogen association.

We have a water association.

We have on and on and on and on. There are huge number of associations that are a little bit most probably well, there's certainly resource staffed to actually go and do this. They've got to draw in this this collection of companies that are prepared to sit around an association table.

And and it is surprising, and we take energy again.

Enel, which is a good company, for example, to look at, they they they recognize that an ecosystem is gonna give them a far greater opportunity to revamp their suppliers, revamp what they can do in the Italian energy market, and also grow themselves out of just Italy into Europe or into South America, which is where they're established.

They've come together in a interesting collaboration, which is very much more Italian driven at the moment, bringing in six or seven or eight utility companies and energy providers that are serving Italy and saying, how do we bring this together for us to actually harmonize our suppliers?

How do we if we need to harmonize them, or how do we accelerate our suppliers to do the needs of what we think our customers want? How do we want to take our customers' thinking and take that back to our suppliers? That's a good example. But there are a host of very good examples, I think, in Europe that will drive through the point of do we has to be platform driven by a given company?

Partly, yes. But partly, I think we've got a lot of opportunity. And then EU funding possibly kicks in, associations kick in that can bring that together.

Yep. Well, there's plenty of plenty of food for thought, and I'm I'm conscious of time now. So I'm gonna start to start to wind us in, and ask for any closing thoughts that you might have, before I close out before I close out what has been a fascinating discussion.

Yeah. I I I I was I had my Christmas hat on, I suppose. Mhmm. I was thinking, okay. I've done a number of posts this year.

I've got about twelve quotes that I'm I don't think I'll do all twelve, but I'll send you the quotes, and then you can maybe put them inside, some of the conversations. So something goes floating across the screen as people are nodding off because Paul Hopcraft's talking too much. And so, well, that's an inspiring, quote or not an inspiring quote, but a food for thought quote.

For example, I think any competitive advantage unfolds in stages.

I think we're too much searching today for the competitive advantage immediately. I believe competitive advantage in ecosystem environment happens in stages. Like, everything in environment grows steadily and in stages. So that's to be one. I mean, how do we how do we get trust and flexibility and innovation together and to say and realize the potential that ecosystems can have if we've got those two three things in place? Another one is, how do we, offer resilience, which I think we're gonna need more of in the near term, and the agility and the adaptability than we actually have today.

Is that through our tools or through our technology? So it's another one. Or how do we tackle complex challenges? And that has to be together, heads on.

It cannot be on our own. So there's a a numbers of, like, quotes that I've got, here that might you just call and look at and say.

My final one is is if we are gonna create a new world, if there is such a belief, a real world, we need real world solutions, and that needs far greater powerful networks of collaborators.

That comes towards our ecosystems, I think, should go.

Good. Some very good, profound thoughts. I feel like all of those could be discussions unto themselves that maybe we pick up in another another forum or We do. In another way.

Thank you thank you very much, Paul. It's been really insightful, a really good conversation.

I somewhere in here, I was thinking this flip from risk aversion to to to the other side of that coin and, you know, positing that as maybe worrying a little bit less about what you might lose and thinking a little bit more about what you might gain from these types of setups and these types of agents.

I I was always taught very early on.

Risk and opportunity are actually the same coin. Yep. You flick a coin, and you're gonna get some risk, but you're gonna get opportunity. You flick a coin, you've got opportunity, but you're gonna get risk. And and I think that coin, picking the coin and saying risk is on one side, opportunity to the other, is a good good way of talking about it.

Good analogy. Let's break the coin so it's both sides opportunity.

That's for sure.

Exactly.

So, look, thank you very much for joining me, and thank you everyone for joining us on this adventure through partner ecosystems on the Total Innovation podcast. A huge thanks again, Paul, for some incredible insights on this topic of partner ecosystems and how they're driving and can drive and will drive transformative change across industries.

Remember, ecosystems thrive on collaboration, adaptability, and shared purpose, and it's all about experimentation and opportunity like many of the things we know as as innovators across organizations.

Stay tuned for more inspiring conversations. As always, keep innovating. If you've enjoyed it, please share this episode. Check out previous episodes and hit subscribe for a number of future episodes coming your way in twenty twenty five and onwards. Thanks again, Paul.

Thank you, Simon, for opportunity to spout force.

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