Artificial Intelligence
There’s an insightful quote from Upton Sinclair: “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” In the interview study we’re in the midst of as I’m writing this, I’ve frequently thought of this quote. It
Ecosystems
Over the last decades, the interest in software ecosystems and business ecosystems has been increasingly strong. Many companies have observed the outsized success of the Apple app store for iPhone and are interested in achieving a similar situation for themselves with a large set of complementors building extensions to one
Data
Normally I try to be very careful with predictions. As Yogi Berra so eloquently said, prediction is hard; especially about the future. When looking at the folks predicting the stock market, the data shows that their accuracy is about as good as random, or even worse. For example, at the
Ecosystems
Similar to living creatures in a biological ecosystem, companies live in a business ecosystem. According to James Moore, a business ecosystem is an economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals – the organisms of the business world. A business ecosystem is characterized by three aspects. First, there’
Ecosystems
The last posts have taken us through 15 rules that I believe are important to ensure we’re the protagonist of our own lives. As I wrote in the introduction to this series, I believe that those who read my content have in common that we take a proactive approach
Ecosystems
The baseball player, Yogi Berra, famously said “Prediction is hard. Especially about the future.” That is of course entirely correct. Who of us predicted the COVID pandemic or the way the stock market tanked in 2022? Of course, there are always doomsayers who continuously predict these things, but they are
Ecosystems
There’s a beautiful saying in American English: build it and they will come. The idea is that simply building something and making it available will cause customers to beat a path to your door. To throw their money at you simply to get access to the amazing thing you
Ecosystems
Many of the companies I work with aspire to build an ecosystem around their product portfolio. The idea of having others complement your offering and increasing its stickiness while taking a cut of the revenue generated by these complementors is, of course, incredibly appealing. As with most things in life,
Ecosystems
Western civilization is built on the notion of the sovereign individual: each person is unique with his or her rights, responsibilities, dreams and fears standing separate from others. Buddhist dogma takes the exact opposite perspective: the notion of self is an illusion and the goal of meditation and other religious
Ecosystems
After decades in the industry, I have yet to meet the first company that doesn’t claim they’re customer centric. There remains a widely held belief that if we focus all our energy on the customer and build what the customer tells us to build, we’re going to
Ecosystems
Traditional business ecosystems were quite static. Partners stayed partners, competitors stayed competitors and your customers were the same as who they were yesterday. In a digital world, however, business ecosystems are in continuous flux. Your supplier becomes your competitor. You become your customer’s competitor. You partner with companies that
Ecosystems
The traditional way of organizing companies was in functional departments where people with the same skillset and education could focus on specific challenges, solve these and then hand over the result to the department that would integrate all the parts from all the functions into one working system. The perceived