June 25, 2025
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Why Business Ecosystems Are the Future: Key Insights from My Schaeffler Vehicle Lifetime Solutions Keynote

Why business ecosystems drive future innovation—key insights from my keynote at Schaeffler Vehicle Lifetime Solutions.

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Keynote at Schaeffler Vehicle Lifetime Solutions Event

At Schaeffler’s Vehicle Lifetime Solutions event, I had the opportunity of delivering a keynote on one of the most transformative topics in business today: Business Ecosystems. The future of industries—from mobility to healthcare—depends on collaboration, digitalization, and sustainability. 

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Here’s a summary of the keynote:

1. The Urgency of Business Model Transformation

Recent surveys, including those from the World Economic Forum in Davos, reveal that many CEOs feel unprepared for the future. Market saturation, sector convergence, and rising customer expectations are forcing companies to rethink their strategies. The old ways of competing in isolated niches no longer work—today, success hinges on collaboration across industries.

2. The Rise of Ecosystems

The future will be hyper-connected, digital, and sustainable. Imagine smart cities where cars communicate with traffic lights, roads, and even pedestrians—this is already happening in parts of Asia. But no single company can achieve this alone. Ecosystems—where businesses, startups, and even competitors work together—are the only way forward.

3. Breaking Down the Barriers: How to Act

Transitioning to an ecosystem model requires overcoming deep organizational inertia. From my work, three frameworks prove most effective:

A. The "Elephant in Pieces" Approach
Most companies try to boil the ocean. Instead:

  1. Identify one high-impact use case (e.g., predictive maintenance for wind farms).
  2. Map the ecosystem partners needed (sensor providers, data analysts, energy grid operators) using the Ecosystem Strategy Map.
  3. Co-design the value proposition—focus on solving the customer’s problem, not your product.

B. The Collaboration Mindset

Forget "coopetition" fears: BMW and Mercedes jointly own HERE Technologies because real-time mapping data is too costly to develop alone.

Build "plug-and-play" interfaces: Open APIs and modular systems attract partners.

C. Measuring What Matters
Traditional KPIs (market share, EBITDA) don’t capture ecosystem health. 

Track: 

  1. Network effects (How many partners are building on your platform?)
  2. Co-innovation velocity (How quickly are you launching joint solutions?)

Your Call to Action

The ecosystem revolution mirrors the early days of digital transformation—companies that moved first (Amazon, Alibaba) built insurmountable advantages. Now is the time to:

  1. Audit your ecosystem readiness: Where do you sit on the spectrum from "siloed" to "orchestrator"?
  2. Start small, scale fast: Pilot a cross-industry project within 6 months.
  3. Reward collaboration: Incentivize teams for partnership-driven growth, not just individual P&L.

As I closed my keynote: 

"The future won’t be owned by the strongest players, but by the best-connected ones."

Want to learn more about ecosystem strategies? Explore the Ecosystemizer Framework to unlock the full potential of your business in the ecosystem era.

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Why Business Ecosystems Are the Future: Key Insights from My Schaeffler Vehicle Lifetime Solutions Keynote

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