Future Ecosystem Ensuring Competitiveness in Continuous Co-Evolution
Authors: Salminen Vesa , Ruohomaa Heikki , Takala Minna 
Published: June 2022

The world is changing rapidly, and it is difficult to form clear understanding of future challenges and opportunities. Continuous demand on sustainability, carbon neutrality, circular economy and life cycle material chain management has changed societies and all industries fast. However, sustainable development and competitiveness are always based on being economically viable and circular economy itself is an economic theory. The amount of usable data in business environment is at the same time exponentially increasing. Technology opportunities as well are prominent to use the data in managing by data for the purpose of business co-evolution. Competitive landscape is shifting from well-defined industries to broader ecosystems and traditional enterprise boundaries are breaking down. This also means for busines transition towards platform economy e.g. enterprise production lines to networked intelligent value chains and ecosystems. Companies need in this disruptive situation an ecosystem strategy and analysis, which type of business model they are utilizing. Businesses are networking and transforming into ecosystems, emphasizing the management of interface processes. It is essential to understand digital ecosystem supporting business co-evolution. Data is a valuable currency that gives fuel for innovation and data driven co-evolution. Capturing of new data from various sources and executing it in business in transition requires human- oriented data-driven business architecture and strategy alignment on that basis towards circular economy business model and continuous coevolution. Circular economy ecosystems are based on economic theory, and they are not working if they are not economically viable. The goal of this article is to identify and analyze the life cycle material flow in circular economy in different business areas and find various business models and similarities in business practices. At the same time, this article attempts to develop framework for the strategic management of complex change through sustainable co-evolution in order to achieve a competitive edge for companies.This research is partly constructive, conceptual and analytical, because it introduces pathway to ecosystem strategy and introduces experiences of applying different evolutionary circular economy business models. Data for this concept creation has been collected over several years on continuous flow from ten different regional applied research and development projects. The data sources have also been interviews and workshops executed during projects on foresight and scenario planning basis. The researchers have been able to participate on creation of several regional ecosystems. Researchers have contributed on ecosystem strategy planning, decision making and continuous development practices.The complexity of co-evolution is difficult to manage without ecosystem- based approach. A generic perception of this research is that successful ecosystem needs clear ecosystem strategy and should set up a shared vision and evolutionary roadmap to serve as basis for common value creation, co- operation and ecosystem leadership. All ecosystem players can focus attention of ecosystems in the value propositions that are being pursued, not in corporate identity. It is important to understand that ecosystem is value driven. Ecosystems are defined around the roles, positions, and flows across the partners that create a value proposition. Nearly all business fields and enterprises face the need for transition towards data- driven circular economy business model and continuous coevolution through digital ecosystem.