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Ecosystem partnerships are driving a dramatic change in the nature of business as industries as diverse as banking, automotive and retail are converging in unprecedented ways–and at an unprecedented rate. To learn how leading companies are embracing innovation in ecosystems to drive both value creation and competitiveness, the IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with Oxford Economics surveyed 1000 top executives in 19 industries and 29 countries between August and January 2019.

The survey cohort included 250 Chief Executive Officers, 150 Chief Financial Officers, 150 Chief Innovation Officers, 150 Chief Marketing Officers, 150 Chief Operations Officer and 150 Chief Alliance/Partnership Officers.

Analysis revealed that organizations with high engagement in ecosystems generate greater revenues from innovation initiatives. Specifically, revenues tied to innovation were more than 14 percent higher for ecosystem-engaged businesses than their less ecosystem-oriented peers.

The analysis showed that organizations differentiated on four innovation-enabling dimensions are more successful than others in ecosystem innovation. Their winning practices: 10;•9;They lead with platforms for innovating in ecosystems. 10;•9;They create the structures that enable the transformation of ideas into desired customer experiences in ecosystems 10;•9;They establish effective, meaningful measurements for successful innovation in ecosystems. 10;•9;They approach innovation with a collaborative mindset and create an environment of openness that shapes innovative behavior. 10;

The study identified the best practices of the most successful companies, ecosystem innovators. They excel across four innovation dimensions. They build platforms and employ ecosystems to better orchestrate customer experiences. They establish processes to effectively measure innovation within ecosystems in which they operate. They form organizational structures that institutionalize innovation. And they create and promote environments of openness and collaboration

The IBM Institute for Business Value, which has been conducting Global Chief Executive Officers studies for 15 years, has been reporting on CEO concerns about business and economic disruption and described their efforts to respond to it. But surprisingly, in the 2018 study CEOs also indicate that the shock of disruption is waning. Only 26 percent of the CEOs say new entrants are actually taking market share. 10; 10; 10;

This report is based on input from 2,148 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), who were interviewed as part of the 19th IBM Global C-suite Study. Both quantitative and qualitative responses were collected from 346 face-to-face meetings and 1,802 in-person phone interviews. To understand how top-performing organizations navigate disruption differently, IBM researchers applied cluster analysis to examine the approaches of three groups of CEOs – Reinventors,. Practitioners and Aspirationals. 10;

Most CEOs see the emergence of platforms and the growing importance of network economics – both scale and scope – as the crucial drivers of future growth.

Almost six in ten Reinventors co-create new products, services or experiences with their customers.

Today’s CEOs have learned to not only accommodate but embrace disruption. Anticipating and responding to sudden and dramatic change has become standard operating procedure. Chief executives from top performing businesses understand that success requires collaboration with partners within ecosystems and on platforms. Indeed, Checklists for leaders are included.

To better understand the current state of world economic competitiveness as well as the challenges and opportunities both present and emerging for national economies, the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) 10;surveyed top executives on a range of topics related to their organizations’ and their nations’ successes.

More than 2,700 C-level executives across the 12 largest national economies were surveyed in collaboration with Oxford Economics.

•9;90 percent of executives cite skilled labor availability and quality as a critical factor for their organization when considering expansion into new markets. 10;•9;54 percent of executives say cyber threats are among the biggest strategic risks for their nation’s economy in the next five years. 10;•9;120 million workers in the world’s 12 largest economies may need to be retrained/reskilled in the next three years as a result of intelligent/AI-enabled automation. 10;

By a wide margin, regulatory risk and cyber threats dominate the attention of business and other leaders as primary risks to their respective economies.

The future success of national economies is heavily dependent upon ecosystem partners working together to develop and maintain a skilled workforce across regional labor markets.

Based on the responses, the researches recommend a focus on developing and maintaining the workforce skills required to realize value from intelligent automation and other emerging technologies.As intelligent automation and other disruptions continue to redefine industries, the types of skills these industries require are also evolving. 10;

The authors analyze IBM research and outline how the most successful established organizations approach innovation and prescribe specific strategies that can help all organizations innovate like an outperformer.

In a 2014 survey of more than 1,000 C-suite executives and their direct reports, we found that the most successful organizations approach innovation differently.

The top six percent of organizations in both operating efficiency and revenue growth pursue distinct strategies in innovation organization, culture and process.

For today’s business leaders, innovation blends the art and science of anticipating the future. It requires understanding what the full potential of new technologies will be, of knowing what customers need and want, even before they know it themselves. And it requires building organizational and ecosystem-wide capabilities to execute and deliver. Successful organizations align innovation activities with business objectives, and they are not afraid to experiment.

Outlines the best practices of the most successful innovators. For example, these, organizations align innovation activities directly with business objectives, pursue “open” innovation structures and create specialized innovation teams. They also source new ideas from diverse locations, often leveraging big data and analytics; innovation is funded separately and measured rigorously.

This report by the IBM Institute for Business Value, part of long-term study of C-suite executives, probes the perspectives of the 818 CEOs to find out what they think the future will bring and how they’re positioning their organizations to prosper in the “age of disruption.”

The report also focuses specifically on what a subset of the 818 – CEOs of the most successful enterprises surveyed – do differently.

IBM analysis identified a small group of organizations that have both a strong reputation as leading innovators and an outstanding financial track record. Lead by so-called Torchbearer CEOs the firms are exploring opportunities to leverage emerging technologies and ecosystems to pursue entirely new revenue streams and models.

CEOs recognize the confluence of technologies magnifies their impact across markets and economies. Emerging technologies intersect and combine in new and different ways, enabling enterprises to redefine how they engage with their customers and partners.

Two-thirds of executives surveyed plan to reassess their strategic direction and explore the potential for novel, non-traditional forms of growth. They’re actively pursuing opportunities to play a new or different role in the ecosystems they inhabit.

IBM’s latest Global C-suite Study asked 2,131 top executives around the globe about the value they derive from data, how they intend to turn data into a differentiating advantage and how far they have progressed with their plans.

During the course of the research, researchers identified four distinct kinds of enterprises – torchbearers, aspirationals, explorers and builders – each at a different stage on the path to data leadership. Comparing Torchbearer CEOs with Aspirational CEOs reveals pronounced variations in the performance of the enterprises they run. An example is innovation: 79 percent of Torchbearer CEOs head organizations with a history of operating at the leading edge, versus just 25 percent of Aspirational CEOs.

The efforts of the leading CEOs to drive a differentiating advantage through AI, data analytics and insight have paid off handsomely: 64 percent of Torchbearer CEOs have presided over superior revenue growth, and 66 percent have delivered outsized profits.

The article offers practitioners guidelines for three key initiatives: 1 Automate intelligently. 2. Strategize with ecosystems. 3. Extract value through new models.

The Torchbearer CEOs in the study show what it takes to become a data leader. These CEOs use AI and intelligent automation to inform their decisions. They promote a culture of belief in data. They make ecosystems a core part of their business strategy. They share data judiciously to gain the benefits of networking without giving away their competitive edge. And they use data to develop new business models with the potential for outsized returns. 10; 10;

The article examines four strategies for creating competitive advantage in markets enabled by digital platforms.

The four strategies are assessed: 10; Strategy 1: The Digital Industrialist - hardware-data-experience. 10;Strategy 2: The Digital Consumer - experience-data-platform-hardware. 10;Strategy 3: The Data Acquirer - buy data (D). 10;Strategy 4: The Platform over Platform (PoP).

By offering their customers even more compelling and unique cross-platform experiences, platform over platform entrants can create new mega-platform environments, overarching existing, otherwise successful platform environments.

By expanding and deepening their customers’ engagement, platform over platform businesses might ultimately relegate some existing platforms to digital infrastructure – providing the pipes and plumbing for customers empowered to jump seamlessly across and between platforms with the support and encouragement of their platform over platform orchestrators.

This analysis assesses the barriers to innovation Japanese executives must contend with and outlines key strategies to help their organizations, and all companies that seek to compete in global marketplaces, assume a leadership role in implementing a business ecosystem strategy.

To better understand the economic and management challenges Japan’s business leaders face and how they are addressing them, the IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with Oxford Economics conducted a survey of 1,151 Japanese executives across 17 industries.

While the strategy of opening up innovation processes to customers, partners and other stakeholders has been adopted successfully in many nations, Japanese organizations appear stuck in closed, insular innovation paradigms

Japanese organizations need to embrace entirely new customer value propositions, build new partnering arrangements and more effectively harness the power of innovation by taking four key sets of actions that: Re-imagine customer experience; Redefine business ecosystems; Promote ecosystem connectivity; Revitalize innovation governance.

A bold analysis of why Japanese business leaders largely ignore new forms of competition emanating from startups or emergent cross-industry players, even as traditional industries such as banking now anticipate massive technology-fueled disruption and how they can change.