Smart Ecosystems – Digital Ecosystems for a Shared Future

The future vision of a “Digital Society 2.0” defines Digital Ecosystems as follows:  

In the future, all business, private, and social activities and services will be supported by software-based systems in an integrated manner and without changes in medium. Additional, completely new synergies can be created through the integration of widely different applications.

The trend that can be observed across almost all domains goes towards complete integration of all systems into Digital Ecosystems, which, driven by a common goal, offer customer-specific solutions across companies. These “Smart Ecosystems” resp. Digital Ecosystems break up former isolated solutions for the control of business processes and technical processes and allow them to converge in an integrated overall solution.

In order to position themselves appropriately for these challenges, companies must strengthen themselves in various areas:

“Need for Partnering” - thinking beyond the boundaries of one’s own company

A core element of a successful strategy is to start thinking beyond the boundaries of your own company, to build cross-company business models, and to exploit synergies. The Fraunhofer IESE fitness check, the Fraunhofer Ecosystem Assessment, supports organizations in reviewing their capabilities with regard to Smart Ecosystems and in anchoring corresponding areas of excellence sustainably in the company.

“Need for Creativity & Speed” - generating cross-company ideas and innovations

Another core element of a successful strategy is the ability to continuously generate new, cross-company ideas and innovations and to quickly assess these in terms of their viability and bring them to market. Regarding the use of creativity techniques, it can often be observed that many companies lack the courage to use these systematically. The creative potential of a company’s staff is only used insufficiently in this context. Furthermore, crowdsourcing can be used to tap the wealth of ideas of current and future end users. Creativity is no coincidence and can be guided in a targeted and efficient manner through the use of systematic methods.

But when do ideas have potential? Fraunhofer IESE uses targeted potential analyses, such as the mobility potential analysis, the Big Data potential analysis, or the SES potential analysis, to evaluate the potential for innovative models that can be unlocked for a company.

Regarding the issue of speed, it can often be seen that many companies know how to produce high-quality products, but often lack the ability to implement or evaluate ideas quickly. In addition, a great deal of reluctance is evident when it comes to implementing new concepts such as Cloud and DevOps, which would enable rapid development. Successful companies have both the ability to develop at a revolutionary pace and to run stable and mature long-term development cycles.