Being part of a creative or innovation ecosystem offers quite some benefits. Knowing if an ecosystem is thriving is an important factor when making decisions.
As you might know, ecosystems bring together mutually supportive firms grouped around a particular business, technology or shared ambition to make differentiated offerings and capture value they could not attain alone.
But what are the important drivers for building and leveraging an ecosystem?
Business density can mean the total number of new and young business owners and a number of employees working in these startups.
In order to grow a creative & innovative ecosystem, there has to be a higher density, which will sprout a higher number of competitive, ambitious projects. If your business is situated in an entrepreneurial community where business owners, enthusiastic workers bumps into each other everywhere they go (on the roads, at the restaurants, coffee shops etc.), it will enhance creativity and innovations.
An environment filled with creative and smart individuals is not enough. Connection is very vital in building and leveraging an ecosystem. It is this interconnection that drives innovations and makes up entrepreneurship in urban ecosystems.
Interconnection, also known as networking, with communities that offer learning support allows you to gain new knowledge –which will complement yours– from actors who have an applicable experience that they will share with others.
It expands and strengthens the creative ecosystem. To boost your daily business achievements, you have to be a learner, curator and applier of available knowledge. Networking will make this easy. However, a lack of interconnection will not allow it to occur.
Diversity is an important element in an ecosystem because it contributes to the financial profitability, idea generation, vibrancy and creativity of the business industry.
It makes a business ecosystem enjoy greater entrepreneurial results than those that specialize in one or two industries. When your business embraces diversity, it helps you work towards long-term success. It encourages open-minded learning, a better productive team, expands market outreach, creates a strong company culture and development of creative ideas that solve problems.
Having all the necessary talents available, irrespective of age, background or race is the best leverage for a business, especially a growing one. If you are just starting out, unexpected challenges will show up almost every time, but utilizing diversity at your workplace will be good leverage.
The ability of a business to get and disseminate information from anywhere is referred to as mobility. There is an increased efficiency when a business is mobile.
Mobilizing your business system, methods and activities saves your business time and money, enhance customer service, improve data accuracy, provide a better work atmosphere, boot sales, and increase profits. A smart city ecosystem can be recognized by a vibrant mobilization practice. Before you go ahead into business mobilization, ensure that you plan adequately and consider all the important variables in order to get all these benefits.
Working on these 4 drivers will improve the vibrancy, activity and effectiveness of your creative and/or innovative ecosystem. Improving those conditions is not always easy and will take time. The first important step will be to understand how they are today. You’ll probably score well on one (or more) drivers, but how good are you? Start to map and monitor all the different players in your ecosystem and you will learn a lot about the impact you can have.
Important startup, creative and smart city ecosystems, like Startups.be, Creative Ring or the City of Lisbon, solved this question by using the DataScouts platform to monitor and measure their impact on the ecosystem.
When you see these benefits, you want to better understand the ecosystem you are part of. That’s where we can help you. DataScouts provides a platform in which you can create a business ecosystem map, monitor your value network, and be aware of what happens in your ecosystem, the trends in your sector, and the achievements of peers. The DataScouts platform combines public data, own private data, and extra content that is relevant to the specific use case. Without any problem, you can visualize tons of information in no time. Contact us and create your own ecosystem today!