The eco-network flight plan

In the blog ‘Stop chasing customers’ we covered the why: you orchestrate an ecosystem instead of chasing customers. This is the how. One repeatable flight plan you can run whether you are looking for your first customer or your fiftieth, at home or across the border. Six moves, in order.

Move 1. Sharpen your value proposition

Everything starts with the value your customer ultimately walks away with, not with what you sell. Adner (2017) defines an ecosystem as the alignment structure of the partners who need to work together for a value proposition to come true. Without a sharp proposition there is nothing to align around. So frame it from the customer’s outcome, in one sentence an outsider would understand.

Move 2. Map the ecosystem

Ask yourself who all has to act for that value to land with your customer. Map the actors, their positions, who hands off to whom, and the links between them (Adner 2017). Mark two things: the gaps where nobody makes the handoff, and the gatekeepers who can open a door or hold it shut. That map is your terrain, not your pipeline.

Move 3. Find your anchor node

On that map you look for the one relationship that unlocks the most: a reference customer, a partner, a community or an institution. That is your runway. It is the weak-tie lesson from ‘Stop chasing customers’ in practice: do not pick the easiest node, but the node that introduces you to many others (Granovetter 1973).

Move 4. Enter through credibility, not price

At a new node the first question is rarely ‘what does it cost?’, but ‘can I trust you?’. So lead with proof and a warm introduction, and turn your first win into a visible reference that de-risks the next one. How you build that credibility is covered in the blog ‘Credibility beats price’.

Move 5. Orchestrate the flywheel

Now you move from deals to dynamics. Dhanaraj and Parkhe (2006) describe how a hub steers a network it does not own, through three levers: keep knowledge moving between the members, make sure everyone wins a fair share, and keep the network stable enough to trust. Reward the connectors who send your business along. A network that wins when you win scales your growth for you.

Move 6. From effectual to causal, deliberately

In the beginning you improvise with what you have. But as patterns repeat, you systematize: qualify, document what works, add people and channels. Keep the founder or the senior relationship holder as the credible person out front while you do it. You build a system without losing the human touch that closes the deal.

The flight plan in brief

1. Sharp value proposition · 2. Map the ecosystem · 3. Anchor node · 4. Enter through credibility · 5. Orchestrate the flywheel · 6. Effectual to causal

A network that wins when you win scales your growth for you.

In practice: pick one market or one big opportunity. Run the flight plan on paper: write your value proposition in one sentence, draw the map, circle your anchor node, and decide what proof you bring in at that node. The rest of the moves follow on their own once that first node says yes.

References

• Adner, Ron. 2017. “Ecosystem as Structure: An Actionable Construct for Strategy.” Journal of Management 43 (1): 39–58.
• Dhanaraj, Charles, and Arvind Parkhe. 2006. “Orchestrating Innovation Networks.” Academy of Management Review 31 (3): 659–669.
• Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–1380.

Series · From first customer to ecosystem · Add Business