Let’s start with the definition of ecology, which is the study of the interactions between living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) things.

Every organisation, whether acknowledged or not, has an ecosystem. This ecosystem is composed of a complex network of interdependent relationships in which each individual strand is important and this contributes to the success or failure of the whole.

Of course there are ecosystems within ecosystems and organisations in turn act with other corporate ecosystems (including customers, competition, vendors, suppliers, board, etc.) to form more complex networks. These important systems are far from stable.

Organisations are constantly changing from the pressures of both physical and human forces. In addition, attendant technologies have created unprecedented forces for change. Players and collaborators within the ecosystem contribute to survival. This may be through innovation, crowd solving, agility, cross-functional development, etc.

Prior to the social business or collaborative era, most organisations didn’t think about the layered ecosystems within which they existed. Many as a result, no longer exist today and the authors of Exponential Organisations believe that those ignoring ecosystems today and avoiding collaboration may well not be around one decade on. 

Finally I invite you to join CoLab – a growing community collaborating around collaboration.

Janice Scheckter, co-founder of Indigo New Media believes that collaboration will change the world