DHL report highlights need for business ‘ecosystems’
DHL has today unveiled a report which states that future success for global companies will be determined by their ability to orchestrate ecosystems or ‘business collectives’.
The paper claims that, in an increasingly globalised world, companies must deploy and activate assets they don’t own or control by tapping into the capabilities of partners.
Companies which successfully apply this new ‘ecosystem’ or business collective model will collaborate to develop shared goals, and will be fully aligned to integrate these goals up and down the supply chain.
“Within the next five years, ecosystem models will thoroughly populate the business world,” said Damian Pike, Vice President, Innovation & Transformation, DHL Supply Chain. “How they will look is unclear, as no two will be or should be the same: the business collective is not a one-size-fits-all approach. What we do know is they will be highly agile and designed to compete faster, better and cheaper than ever before.”
Conversely, the white paper argues that companies which persist in adopting an inside-out business approach, informed only by their own internal perceptions and capabilities, risk of being left behind by those that have adopted a forward-thinking approach.
The paper’s author, Lisa Harrington, said: “More and more, consumers will be brought into the fold as part of the business collective. By giving customers a more active role, businesses will increasingly harvest ‘tribe’ intelligence.”
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