​Get automated data and insights about how entrepreneurs and startups move through the startup ecosystem: get to know what support organizations and events the entrepreneurs and startups are interacting with and at which velocity entrepreneurs and startups move through the ecosystem. The solution is based on one core application of ecosystemOS, Circle Pass, a modern identity management solution that enables data sharing and portability among individuals and startup ecosystem entities.

​Find out the foundational component that allows cities, regions and countries to take control of their startup ecosystem data for setting out the terms and conditions for the use of such data for the benefit of everyone. Watch below a short conversation with Khairool Adzelan, Manager, Ecosystem Development and Digital Innovation at SDEC, that summarizes the essence of this use case. Watch the whole conversation here and contribute with your comments in the global conversation.

Run a digital service to periodically understand the relationships and dependencies between the different support organisations and related existing supporting services that contribute to create a better startup journey experience within the ecosystem.

The startup ecosystem mapping app is:

• A primary core application and function for startup ecosystems 
• To aggregate and distribute ecosystem information in a standardized format, 
• To maintain a “master copy” of updated and standardized inventory of the existing supporting services and related support organisations information available in the ecosystem 
• To assist creating more logical and effective relationships between services -> and therefore an improved journey experience for the startups

All these use cases will be presented during our "Ecosystem Builders Who Tech" event during Slush 2022. If by chance, you can't attend to our workshop in Helsinki and you are interested in it, reach out to organize it in your facilities. Contact us also to check out our small-scale and short-term pilots​ for each of the use cases described above.

We are going to take you behind the scenes into one of our customer stories so you can see how things work in practice when those responsible of developing the startup ecosystem are committed to initiate the journey towards an orchestrated startup ecosystem that contributes to accelerate economic growth.

For our guest speakers from Sarawak Digital Economy Corporation (SDEC), Khairool Adzlelan Aman, Manager, Ecosystem Development and Digital Innovation, and Elizabeth Linli Charles, Executive, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, it is the set up of the ecosystem operator function that was the first step towards a more effective coordination in the Sarawak startup ecosystem.
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In this webinar, Khairool and Elizabeth will take us behind the scenes into their own ecosystem operator journey to show exactly:

• the beginning of the journey
• the alignment with the different ecosystem actors
• the long term and data-driven development perspective
• the current state in the Sarawak startup ecosystem
• And more

On October 18th 2022 @ 2:00 PM EEST

This webinar is ideal for national, state and city governments, public private organizations, economic development agencies, development financiers and foundations

In the end of the session, there will be Q&A and experiences sharing. Don't miss it out and book your place

​Sarawak Digital Economy Corporation Berhad (SDEC) is a company that is wholly owned by the State Government of Sarawak under the purview of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning to spearhead Sarawak’s digital economy initiatives and transform Sarawak into a Digital Economy Powerhouse. Established in January 2018 its main objectives are to revolutionize Sarawak’s economy and industries as well as to spur socioeconomic growth and advancement.

Ecosystem Builders Who Tech is here again, bringing together startup ecosystem builders, data specialists and software engineers to discuss how interoperability improves the startup journey experience via the safe and secure exchange of data related to the startup journey and the supporting services.
We will discuss among other topics about:

• What is interoperability? Why does interoperability should become a priority from now on?
• How to formulate an interoperability strategy? How to move it from strategy to measurable actions?
• How can interoperability practices bring competitive advantages and resilience to startup ecosystems?
• What does interoperability solutions look like?

Join us at our company headquarters in beautiful dark Helsinki on November 16, 2022 from 9:00 to 15:00 EET.

Agenda

• Overview of startup ecosystem development
• How countries are using digital for startup ecosystem development and learnings from those
• How to turn existing manual operations into digitally scalable solutions
• How to pool existing resources with ecosystem mindset to get more done together with existing budgets
• Fundamentals of startup ecosystem interoperability
• The opportunity with startup ecosystem interoperability
• Barriers to adoption
• Factors driving interoperability
• Solutions: practical experiences from countries, industries and institutions that have established interoperability
• Building blocks: Governance, Security, Legal, Semantic, Technical
• Use cases to enable startup ecosystem interoperability
• Q & A
• Networking​

Pushed by market matureness, our most demanded startup ecosystem development workshop is back. Learn how to take your startup ecosystem to the next level, an intimate, private 2-day event where you will work directly with us to learn the core elements of accelerated startup ecosystem growth.

The Digiole team, backed by work experience with 30+ startup ecosystems, will share real-world cases from some of the most relevant startup ecosystems in the world and give you the hottest insights for ecosystem growth. Besides the fundamentals of ecosystem development (ecosystem development team, processes, best practices, measurements and more), we have updated our workshop with hands-on content related to data strategy in a multi stakeholder environment, which is essential for any ecosystem to stay relevant, competitive, and innovative amidst constant change.
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The main objective of this workshop is to help you build a startup ecosystem growth roadmap with your ecosystem through knowledge, connections, strategies, tools and technology.

Four months after our first commercialized startup ecosystem mapping solution, we are proud to share that the first SaaS Private Beta of the Startup Ecosystem Mapping App will be released in the beginning of September 2022. 

The process to request access to the Private Beta is open now for 30 days. Startup ecosystem builders wishing to request an invite to our Private Beta may do so through the website www.ecosystemos.com or drop us a message at oscar@digiole.com for any enquiries or feedback.

All invitations are more than welcome but be informed that we will only work with a handful of them to make sure that every ecosystem builder can have a great experience.
The core features available for this release include:

• Ecosystem Maps Dashboard: create and manage multiple ecosystem maps. Grid and list view for the maps. Search maps by title. Multiple sorting options
• Ecosystem Map Canvas: create and add services to the ecosystem map. Live editing mode. View and manage services information and details
• Ecosystem Service Filter: Filter services based on different properties. Save and manage filtered views based on filtering criteria

Digiole’s next milestone will be the release of the startup ecosystem mapping app as Open Beta which will be an upgraded version of the one issued for Private Beta testing, which will also include new additional features. 

The Startup Ecosystem Mapping App is the first 'Application Module' of ecosystemOS, with the vision to provide a 360-degree aggregated view of the innovation entrepreneurship environment with great accuracy.

We are looking forward to you joining us as part of this amazing journey that will bring better outcomes for the startup world.

If you have specific questions, please make sure to reach out to us. In the meantime, stay tuned for exciting things to come!

There are many conversations going on around the need for ecosystems to get a 360-degree aggregated view of the innovation entrepreneurship environment with great accuracy but in reality too little with digital is being done to unlock ecosystem data that will eventually help make efficient decisions. Ecosystems are missing many opportunities because the true digital world (data economy, API economy, etc.) and how to implement it in their context is not well understood.

Starting from August 2022, we are going to activate a global tour to inform the cities, regions and countries about what is digitally required and how to gradually start implementing a relevant data infrastructure to harness the power of data to have a more accurate ecosystem analysis and benchmarking, remove barriers to entrepreneurs and startups and eventually improve the business environment.

The plan is to execute 5-10 exclusive sessions from mid August to November 2022. We will lay out:

• the near and long term opportunities that we want to realize,
• the challenges that territories face as they seek to increase volume, quality and velocity at ecosystem level
• the pillars that we have identified as core to unlocking the power of data for ecosystems,
• and the missions that you must prioritize now and in the medium/long term

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​And during Slush 2022, November 17-18, we will organize a final session to share all the captured learning and finding during the global tour with the global ecosystem building audience attending the Slush event.

It’s through interoperability that innovation entrepreneurship ecosystems will begin to break down their silos, use standards to harmonize its fragmented and incompatible systems and data sharing, and achieve better outcomes.

This digital approach is already being implemented in sectors like healthcare or transportation, but in the context of innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem development, there is no one that would be referred to as a global leader. This is the big opportunity for your ecosystem.

This Global Tour is not a final answer, but the beginning of a global conversation about the way to support the use of data in ecosystems.  Put your ecosystem in the future path.

For many years, the Startup Commons team has been invited to take part in different RFP processes and projects to develop and implement startup ecosystem portals with the aim to help navigate ecosystem actors (startups, supporting providers, investors, corporates, mentors, etc) more effectively within the ecosystem, improving the connectivity among them and therefore removing barriers to help anyone get access to the different available resources within the ecosystem.

And while we thanked the invitation, we decided to not participate in the majority of them due to misalignment with our own mission. We, as a company developing interoperability solutions for startup ecosystems, couldn't contribute to creating another silo. It is a matter of principles. When we properly evaluated each of those cases (we want to keep them anonymous for confidentiality reasons), we noticed that those RFPs and project requirements to build startup ecosystem portals had been poorly designed, targeting to develop portal solutions that were not reflecting the logic behind what startups and other actors need, and therefore contributing to a low impact for entrepreneurs and startups. Additionally, the RFPs and projects alike were fully misaligned with the direction the digital world is headed, with the technology, turning their back to the future evolution of the technology, developing short-term vision solutions with old techstack and technology architectures that will end up in inefficiencies or wasted resources. And what is most important, they became useless because information was outdated soon.

Once those startup ecosystem portals were delivered, we proceeded to evaluate their real impact, finding the following problems:

And while these portals became a good marketing tool to provide a good overview of many things, they simply failed in their efforts to serve the main purpose: help ecosystem users navigate within the ecosystem, giving them what they need at the right time. 

This bad user experience encouraged the Startup Commons team to dive deeper in this topic so you can learn more about the next generation of online startup ecosystem portals. We simply call it the Non-Portal approach.

First of all, one fundamental thing to understand is that geographical startup ecosystems are very fragile to political changes, where prioritization and maintenance of the supporting infrastructures for innovation and entrepreneurship are often very likely to be politicized. When a new government enters into power, it is very likely that existing strategies, budgets, key people, processes, tools, data and history are at risk to be changed, where significant learning, knowledge and progress will be lost and many things again start from the scratch and therefore ecosystems simply get stuck in their development. Therefore, as a first step, and before any digital development, there should be specific dedicated neutral entity with mandate from all ecosystem key actors, proper resourcing and long term approach, looking at the needs of all sides and representing all the key segments of the ecosystem, to become a neutral custodian of common ecosystem infrastructure and a hub for common information and data sharing, with sole focus for looking at the benefit of the entire ecosystem as a whole. We call it an ecosystem operator.

​This ecosystem operator function is missing in the majority of the ecosystems, regardless of their maturity level. There are no sustainable resources defined for such setup, available for ongoing and long term data management and digital development efforts. And a typical reason for this is the lack of digital transition vision along with missing commitment to pursue it. Another related reason that is common in digital transition projects, is the typical separated relationship of “business” and “digital” teams, departments, or organizations. Where a more merged approach is needed for a team, where knowledge and expertise of both sides are embedded in one.

Regarding the startup ecosystem portals, they are also well known under different terminology like startup ecosystem one-stop shop or startup hub. In any case, when you hear an ecosystem deploys a portal, if you’re like an entrepreneur it means you can do everything you need to do for your startup in a single location, getting access to digital services and information offered by different ecosystem actors to help you navigate within the ecosystem easier, faster and finding support for the challenges related to the different stages of the startup journey, from formation to growth.

Entrepreneurs and startups are clearly in need of answers that are relevant to them and their unique circumstances. They are making decisions every single day. They come and go to different places and digital platforms to learn, connect, develop, sell, etc. They interact anytime, anywhere. If we think for a moment the amount of information that is demanded for entrepreneurs developing companies with all kinds of different business models, industries, strategies, people, etc, then it becomes clear that data is definitely a key asset that must be unlocked and properly managed. Therefore, with such reality, what should it be built to really help entrepreneurs, startups and other ecosystem actors?

Let’s reflect back for a while to review and understand some past portal approaches in order to understand what to build for the present and future:

​The first and most recognizable portal I remember is the original Yahoo!, which had a directory view, in which the same information was provided to everyone and “forcing” users to navigate to find the information they need.

Google is the maximum exponent for this approach, providing users direct answers based on the questions (search queries) they make, with additional effort of trying to match the results based on the profile they can have on the user (language, location, search history, etc.) Users come to get answers when they have first identified that they have a question and know how to formulate that question, i.e. know the right keywords to ask

​And more recently, we have the social network approach, with Facebook as the clear example, with its ability to distribute/target messages with great (questionable) accuracy to users where they already are based on their profile and patterns, regardless if they have already identified or formulated the question. 

With the previous references in mind, as a simple thought exercise, imagine an entrepreneur with a question that she/he can't even clearly formulate. Now imagine that via analogy of a medical condition and trying to find a useful answer via a portal with filtering type of intelligence without proper search. Now imagine being able to search via Google compared to that. It’s definitely better, but still far from what you would like to do, compared to if you could consult a real doctor with related subject matter expertise. And likely, you would definitely not want such sensitive information to be shared in Facebook to have such a public forum to collect your data and provide answers by drug companies or only commercial services that can afford to target you (pay for ads for you to pay for service you will get). But nevertheless the way you would like to get suggestions for actions to take would be optimal to get suggestions based on your profile without needing to know what to ask and whom. But naturally in such a way that you are not actually sharing your profile outside of your control and without being able to control what messages from who can even reach you (mute those that are not useful).

That’s the kind of experience we are visualizing. Entrepreneurs and startups should get responses for their ventures based on their local context, history, profile, achieved milestones, etc. and even getting responses and services without the startup having to ask or request a specific service, simply because there is intelligence that tracks them based on the ecosystem interactions and startups progress.

​When considering solutions to cope with these challenges, we often see that key principles are missing or were not taken into account during the process to design the RFP/project. These principles are key in order to make sure that the collaborative and open nature of ecosystems is encapsulated by any solution that is implemented and deployed for the ecosystem, making sure that everyone is benefiting:

• Only things that can be understood, can be developed - First of all, RFPs are designed by people whether they have an ecosystem or digital understanding but definitely the majority of them  don’t fully understand the big picture from business and technology perspectives. It is very rare to have the unique view and expertise of operating in the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship and digital. In a way, RFPs are similar to "surveys", where the quality of answers are dependent on the quality of the questions. So how the RFPs have been designed have a defining impact on the best potential outcomes.
• Understanding the needs - Startups want ecosystems (ecosystem builders/developers/operators) to proactively provide services and accurate information that are relevant to them and their current circumstances. Proactively service delivery means that the ecosystem delivers a service to a startup when a startup journey event occurs, without the startup having to request the service
• No-vendor lock - When looking at developing and deploying ecosystem solutions, it is key to make sure that the solution to be developed is being built under open standard principles, to guarantee independence and vendor neutral and to enable flexibility, choice, interoperability and efficiency and in general to avoid situations where future improvements to solutions are imposed by global roadmaps that have nothing to do with the needs and context of local ecosystem actors
• Sharing is caring - RFPs should define how the solution can connect with local systems and what standards should be adopted to make these connections, enabling collaboration with organisations that support those standards and also “forcing” you to participate in local technical strategy groups and roundtables to ensure that consensus is built to benefit the majority of the whole ecosystem
• Data at the core - RFPs are usually too much focused on features and functionalities related to information directories, aggregation and visualization and too little on the assets that really matter: data.  The biggest focus should be on capitalizing data and making it findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable, with special focus on data quality so that machine learning and artificial intelligence can play a key role to enable more automation, accuracy, etc. Data collection and making data available is the easy part and only 25% of the job. Distributing it effectively to the right audience, at the right time, via the right channel is the real challenge.

While we understand that perfect solutions don’t exist, the points mentioned above are not inconsequential, being enough to flag them here so that can be taken into account for similar future initiatives and also find additional inspiration by some insights for improvements below:

• Start as simply as possible, focusing on selecting and solving one use case at a time, but one use case at a time that contributes to all the previous problems solved and also enabling all the solutions to work together. For instance, aggregating and distributing startup events is a great place to start with as it is always happening and it is a problem on its own (improve audience-events matching).  
• Identify value first and then commit to scale - Build enough understanding and project base during the RFP design phase, making sure that those who suffer the problem are involved in the RFP design process, working collaboratively with the procurement team. Hackathons are becoming more and more usual as part of the procurement process to help narrow down key requirements and build initial concepts. MVP and agile developments are also very recommended in your efforts to create a path toward a successful use case. Some key elements that should be covered are: conceptualization and description of the use case, description of the use case strategy, user roles and processes (customers, partners, etc.), user needs, generating user value on the use case and user promises, identification, listing, textual documentation and preliminary user interface design (wireframes), data sharing contracts, preliminary definition of software and server architecture, phasing of digital implementation, tentative scheduling and draft call for tenders, sustainability model and preliminary structure and resourcing plan for the use case to be implemented
• Once the use case is selected, the requirements of the technological architecture should be sized according to the complexity of the use case while at the same time it is able and ready to scale up and evolve without needing changing any other underlying technologies we started with.
• Open standards and modern and mature open source based technologies and languages for data (Ie GraphQL) developed for the purpose.
• Adding more “platforms, portals and applications” with siloed databases approach, does not fix the connectivity problem, as the problem is at the data connectivity level between all these applications. It’s not that the information would not exist or about missing or wrong applications per se, it’s often about manual and/or non sustainable strategy and solution that is applied in projects supporting an ecosystem to increase connectedness. Ie people manually collecting and sharing data between applications.
• Follow the data journey - Focus on transactions and interactions between the users and services: collect data, organize data, distribute data, reach users where they already are, match information based on user profiles.
• Ecosystem account for individuals and teams are at the core of ecosystem interoperability as it enables the interconnection between multiple people, organizations, platforms and data, where the interaction is actually happening, while also making sure that data is in possession and controlled by its rightful owners, whether they are individuals and/or entities

Ecosystems have a long way to go to activate this digital transition for ecosystem orchestration but it is definitely the right approach. However the decisions should have been made five years ago. We just have to look at when other industries like finance, telecom, healthcare, transportation, etc. started and how they are unlocking innovative cross-functional solutions by enabling interoperability. 

This is the big void we are covering with ecosystemOS and I believe this is where we can best be in the world, helping ecosystem builders and operators to design, develop and deploy use case driven technology solutions, step by step, to enable interoperability and information exchange within and between ecosystems to help them make quick, secure and efficient decisions.

It's not Jules Verne's world. It is already happening. Reach out to us to find out how to start.

Startup Commons - service by Digiole, a global leader in startup ecosystem interoperability, has partnered with the Sarawak Digital Economy Corporation (SDEC)​, a government-owned company, entrusted to lead the implementation of Sarawak’s digital economy. 

Under the terms of the agreement, both parties are working together to design, develop and deploy use case driven technology solutions to enable interoperability and information exchange within the Sarawak startup ecosystem and with other ecosystems globally.

The ecosystem mapping application will be the first use case and application module in the ecosystemOS data infrastructure to be implemented to aggregate and distribute ecosystem information in a standardized format, keeping updated and standardized inventory of the existing supporting services and related support organizations information available in the Sarawak ecosystem and assisting to create more logical and effective relationships between services and therefore an improved journey experience for the startups.
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Using Digiole’s unique expertise in the intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship and digital, SDEC will be able to work towards future growth goals, ensuring the foundational layer to scale its operations, enable collaboration with Sarawak ecosystem actors, achieve efficiencies in the ecosystem workflow as well as global interoperability with other ecosystems.

To learn more about startup ecosystem interoperability capabilities, visit ecosystemos.com, contact Digiole CEO oscar@digiole.com, or call +358 50 553 3554​. To schedule a meeting in advance, click here.

Digiole is a ​Helsinki-based tech company providing world leading digital interoperability solutions for industries to enable ecosystem business models. In the innovation entrepreneurship landscape, backed by 10+ years of experience providing innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem development consulting and training services to 30+ ecosystems globally, Digiole solutions connect ecosystem actors, platforms and data, building ecosystem interoperability and to make it work in an affordable and sustainable way. 

​Startup ecosystems are filled with multiple digital and in-person touchpoints to bring help for entrepreneurs and startups. Behind the scenes, removing obstacles and creating a better startup journey experience within the ecosystem, is the ecosystem mapping app and its capacity to be interoperable with other systems.

It’s through interoperability that startup ecosystems will begin to break down their silos, use open standards to harmonize their fragmented and incompatible systems and data sharing, and achieve better outcomes.

Here's seven aspects that make Startup Commons ecosystem mapping app different to other approaches:

The startup ecosystem interoperability space is unique and it is a long term journey that never stops. Ecosystem operators need a stable technological partner to help them navigate the complexity of ecosystem interoperability. This partner should:

• Advise you regarding both digital and domain knowledge aspects for ecosystem development
• Provide professional consultation and support to help you grow ecosystem as well as offering technology advice
• Demonstrate a history of stability

Take a simple first step with Startup Commons and start finding the answers to your ecosystem challenges.