ILC: Innovate, Leverage, CommoditiseUsing Your Ecosystem as a Sensing Engine
ILC is an ecosystem play in Wardley Mapping. You provide a component as a utility, let others innovate on top of it, and use what their consumption tells you to decide what to commoditise next. Run well, the cycle turns your ecosystem into a sensing engine that makes you a fast follower to its successes.
How the Cycle Works
The cycle starts once you provide a component as a utility that others can build on. It then repeats.
Innovate
You provide a component as a utility, such as compute on demand. Others in your ecosystem innovate on top of it, building new products and services. They take on the cost and risk of that exploration.
Leverage
You leverage the consumption data from your utility. It shows you which of the ecosystem's new products and services are spreading.
Commoditise
You commoditise the innovations that are spreading into new utility components. These become the foundation for the next round of innovation, and the cycle repeats.
The Result: A Sensing Engine
Run the cycle and your ecosystem acts as a sensing engine. Others do the exploring, the consumption data tells you what is working, and you follow quickly by industrialising it. The Gameplay Patterns catalogue lists this play as Sensing Engines (ILC), and the doctrine principle "Listen to your ecosystems" describes the same idea.
Why the Model Gets Stronger as It Grows
Innovation and efficiency usually pull in opposite directions, because the uncharted and the industrialised need different ways of working. ILC splits them: the ecosystem does most of the innovating while you concentrate on running utilities efficiently. As the ecosystem grows, three things grow with it.
Innovation
More companies building on your utility means more new products and services appearing on top of it, without you funding the exploration.
Efficiency
More consumption brings greater economies of scale in the underlying component, so you can provide it more cheaply.
Customer Focus
More consumption also brings more data about what users are adopting, so what you commoditise next is what the market is already choosing.
First Mover and Fast Follower
ILC combines two positional plays. You are a First mover in industrialising the underlying component, which gives you scale. You are then a Fast follower to whatever the ecosystem builds on it: others take the risk of exploring, and you industrialise what succeeds. You do not need to be first to every new idea, only quick to spot and commoditise the ones that spread.
Letting the Ecosystem Do the Pioneering
Pioneers are the people who explore the new and uncertain. They fail often, but what they build makes later success possible. ILC moves much of that pioneering outside your organisation, to the companies building on your utility. That does not make the ecosystem self-sustaining. You still have to tend it: keep the utility dependable, make it easy to build on, and give the companies using it reasons to stay.
The Risks
ILC is hard to run well. Three challenges stand out.
The Ecosystem May See You as a Predator
If you keep commoditising what others build on you, they may start to see you as a threat rather than a partner, and some may stop building on you. Commoditising too aggressively can weaken the ecosystem you depend on.
You Have to Act on the Data Quickly
The data only helps if you act on it. Once you spot an innovation spreading, you need to industrialise it before a competitor does, which takes an organisation able to move fast.
You Need a Utility Worth Building On
The cycle only starts if others want to build on your component. It has to meet a real need and be dependable enough for others to bet their own products on it.
Where to Look on Your Map
ILC applies to components at or near Commodity (+utility) that others can build on. If a component on your map is moving from Product to utility, ask who could provide it as a utility, who would build on it, and who would see the consumption data. If the answer is a competitor, they may be able to run this play against you.
Related
Sources
- Adapted from Simon Wardley, Wardley Maps, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Material adapted from these sources is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.