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Ecosystems are the new engine of business growth

The business press loves to celebrate the unicorn that springs from a garage or the multinational that reinvents itself with a shiny new product. Yet many of those headline stories wither after the first market shock, while quieter firms keep compounding returns. What distinguishes the long‑run winners is not a single breakthrough but the ecosystem they manage to build around it—a living network of partners, suppliers, start‑ups, universities, investors, and regulators that learns and scales together. If tomorrow’s leaders cannot design and steer such networks, they will find that even the most brilliant invention is quickly commoditized by someone who can.

Today, ideas, money, and skilled people cross borders as quickly as a new app rolls out. Meanwhile, sudden shocks—wars, supply‑chain snags, new climate rules—arrive with almost no warning. A company that tries to tackle everything on its own ends up blocking its own progress. The firms that run ahead invite others to help solve the customer’s broader problem and share in the upside. That collaborative instinct—ecosystem‑led growth—is already reshaping the expectations placed on MBA graduates and seasoned executives alike.

Ecosystem‑led growth: from internal projects to shared platforms

To grasp the shift, trade the old picture of innovation—a locked‑down R‑&‑D lab pushing finished products to the market—for a living network of partners that share data, technology, and revenue in real time. Imagine a digital health platform that lets hospitals, insurers, and fitness‑device makers connect through one interface, or an industrial‑IoT framework where equipment manufacturers and analytics start‑ups plug in their own modules to create joint solutions. In these systems, value flows toward the orchestrator —the player that sets common standards, keeps quality high, and ensures the rewards are shared. The orchestrator earns a premium because it removes friction for everyone and buffers risk: when a supply shock hits, firms embedded in well‑structured networks can reallocate resources in weeks, not quarters. The lesson is straightforward: in a volatile world, adaptability beats ownership, and well‑run ecosystems multiply adaptability.

Learning to orchestrate: A new managerial discipline

Knowing that ecosystems matter is only the first mile; orchestrating one is a marathon that demands fresh skills. Leaders must learn to map “jobs to be done” across an entire customer journey, identify which needs the firm can meet alone, and decide where partners would create greater speed or credibility. They must translate that map into a governance design: clear decision rights, equitable value‑sharing formulas, transparent data‑access rules, and dispute‑resolution paths that avoid costly deadlocks.

These abilities cannot be gleaned from a briefing note. They have to be practiced—much like negotiating a merger or running a turnaround. That is why business programs increasingly weave ecosystem cases into finance, operations, and technology courses rather than relegating the topic to an innovation elective. When students debate a platform’s profit‑and‑loss statement, they begin to see that “top‑line growth” depends on partner adoption rates and that capital efficiency improves when external developers shoulder some R‑&‑D spending. In live simulations, a team playing the incumbent firm learns how a seemingly minor clause on data ownership can deter newcomers, while the start‑up team discovers that too aggressive a revenue share will scare the orchestrator’s board of directors.

The payoff of this experiential loop is behavioral as much as intellectual. Graduates who have repeated it begin every strategy off‑site by scanning for unmet needs across the ecosystem, not just within their factory walls. They push for key performance indicators linked to partner success—activated integrations, joint‑revenue bookings, and net‑promoter scores that include third‑party touch‑points—and they anticipate the information‑technology architecture required to make those measures possible. In short, they carry an “outside‑in” reflex that traditional functional training rarely instills.

Governance, trust, and the long‑term horizon

If ecosystems accelerate growth, they also magnify missteps. Over-centralization—where the orchestrator captures too much of the pie—gradually drains partner enthusiasm, as early e‑marketplaces discovered when sellers abandoned platforms that hiked fees without warning. Fragmented incentives breed friction: hardware manufacturers that chase unit margins will clash with software firms seeking recurring subscriptions unless leadership aligns pricing models from the outset. Perhaps most pernicious is governance debt: postponing thorny questions about intellectual property, liability, or sunset clauses because “we need to move fast.” Those unanswered questions resurface precisely when the scale is within reach, forcing renegotiations that can stall momentum for months.

Avoiding these traps does not require an encyclopedia of rules; it requires the discipline to bring partners into the design room early, surface their fears, document what must change as volume grows, and commit to transparent measurement. Successful orchestrators publish interface road‑maps so third parties can invest with confidence, open feedback channels that flag bottlenecks before they become exit points, and adjust revenue shares as new categories of value emerge. They view governance as a living asset that demands maintenance in much the same way a city maintains its roads and bridges—because traffic grinds to a halt if the infrastructure crumbles.

The new imperative for leadership is to serve as a bridge builder. Strategic partnerships now matter more than stand‑alone assets, and innovation management has moved from guarding secrets to orchestrating networks. Executives therefore need two interconnected abilities: first, the vision to see where external allies can extend a value proposition; second, the discipline to craft governance that keeps every partner engaged, accountable, and resilient. Leaders who master this dual craft will spot disruption earlier, unite stakeholders others consider incompatible, and unlock growth trajectories unattainable through isolated effort. Sustainable advantage belongs to those who can attract, align, and continually renew the ecosystems around them.

Learn more about the MERIT program at RTU, in collaboration with RBS. This article was originally published by RBS (RTU) here.