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 And what is most important, they became useless because information was outdated soon.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 [email protected], 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.

If you are an economic development financier driving innovation and entrepreneurship, one of the crucial aspects is to maximize the impact of the public funding flowing within the ecosystem.

It is assumed that they have a great understanding about the startup journey and that they have accurate data and information to support their decisions towards implementation. The reality is quite different. And we, as entrepreneurs, know that assumption is the mother of all mistakes, in one form or another. Only things that can be understood, can be developed.

Here's a process followed by many ecosystems with different size and maturity levels that helps, among other things, minimize the mismatch in the public funding:
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1.- Understand the startup journey​, from "idea to product, to growing business" and from "talent to team, to real organization" in balanced manner

3.- Understand the service targets that are needed to support startups in their different phases. Services in the ecosystem should focus on:

• ​Support ideation to create new potential innovations in technology, business models, processes etc. and to develop these to actual growing businesses and
• To support the team formation and further development for actual effective organization. Below is a chart of some typical services and to what part of startup development those are most relevant, along with some ecosystem level focus areas in context to these services.

Following the process above can help you separate your assumptions from your decision-making and to implement what is really needed vs what is trendy. This process is what we recommend to use for all decisions related to startup ecosystem development, and it becomes more powerful the more it is adopted among the different ecosystem actors.

And, when things don't turn out how you hoped they would, then you should evaluate how the decision was made. There might be different reasons but lack of data and resources are usually behind them.
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If you have questions about applying the ecosystem framework, want more examples of how it was implemented, or you even want to propose improvements, please reach out: info at startupcommons.org​

Ecosystem Mapping App is the first 'Application Module' of EcosystemOS - a digital service for startup ecosystems to aggregate and distribute ecosystem information in a standardized format, with the main goal to help maintain the best and most accurate information for startups, support organizations, governmental entities and other ecosystem stakeholders and to provide ecosystem intelligence help them make quick, secure and efficient decisions.
Watch this five minute demonstration and see how Ecosystem Mapping App helps startup ecosystems to find their gaps with holistic view, standardised information and interoperability.

Starting Q2 this year - As an ecosystem representative, your ecosystem can apply to Join our global alliance membership. This will enable you to start deploying EcosystemOS Mapping App in your local ecosystem(s), to enable data flow within and between ecosystems via globally shared needs within ecosystems.
As a member of the alliance your ecosystem can also be part of contributors and/or governance parties of the global open standards, for innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem builders, operators, architects and developers globally.
Benefits of the alliance
Nobody can develop open standards alone, yet transparent open (non-proprietary) standards are needed to enable true interoperability within and between ecosystems, especially in areas like;

• commonly established terminology with commonly accepted definitions (data is only as good as the definition of the meaning of each data attribute).
• commonly used and transparent key performance indicators (KPIs), for performance measures and benchmarking
• common data strategy for what data is to be collected, stored and how it is to be handled.
• common principles about what data is shared, to whom, for what purposes and on what terms.

It is clear that no ecosystem can develop these alone and it is also clear that interoperability within and between ecosystems can't be effectively achieved without these. At the same time, it's clear that via alliance collaboration, the overall cost and risk of development goes down for all participating members. 
As we are finalizing the work to publish the 2022 Alliance Program details, you can check out the 2021 collaborative ecosystem development project call for more information about the established foundation that the 2022 program is based on.

​Together, cheaper and faster!

Few things are as important as common understanding and definitions. Without knowing exactly what specific terms mean, and how they apply to given situations, little discourse startup or ecosystems development can take place. In developing startups and startup ecosystems, there are still many terms that are misunderstood or misused.

There's no standardised definition of what is a startup. Wherever we work, whoever we ask, entrepreneurs, support organisations, investors, governmental entities, etc. have their own understanding and definition of the startup term, what makes difficult to develop any ecosystem.

Here's a definition based on the startup development phases​ you can use in your local context in case you are still missing it. It was defined with the main goal to make it as complete, global and neutral as possible:

​And then, use that definition combined with the evaluation tool below to assess the potential of any startup in your ecosystem:

Wondering how the whole ecosystem can adopt it and become a standard? Get to know more here

We are launching the year with focus on Ecosystem Mapping App - a central piece of ecosystem interoperability, that brings about new meaning, context, and ecosystem insights through a combination of multiple diverse sources of data.

2022

We’re feeling energized. Over the last year, we’ve implemented some big changes, grown our team and set strong foundations, to complete our transition towards a fully digital company serving innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem builders. With focus on data-driven solutions, we help to bring the answers to the questions that matter for ecosystem development in a more efficient, accurate and scalable way.

Ecosystem Mapping App

The ecosystem mapping activity is at the core of any ecosystem​​ and we are excited to update our global network of ecosystem builders.

Based on the foundation that your primary data, data distribution and defining data sharing rights, should always remain in local hands, controlled by the rightful owners depending on the data in question, from the very beginning to long-term. Ecosystem mapping application is currently available as customised implementation with APIs first - approach, to give you more ownership about the solution, more control of your ecosystem data. 

The more control over the data and digital tools the ecosystem developers and operators have, the better are the quality, accuracy and value of that data is. And so are all are related ecosystem applications, analysis, measurements, forecasting, decisions and planning, utilizing it towards developing, accelerating and growing the ecosystem.

​It’s 2022 and if managing ecosystem data and distribution of it beyond manual efforts is not in your plans for ecosystem development, you have already fallen behind. You’re essentially missing out on the answers that you need to effectively support entrepreneurs, startups and innovation in general and, most importantly, you are wasting your always limited ecosystem development resources and opportunities, around the data that already exists in your ecosystem, but it's simply not utilised properly.

Make managing your ecosystem data a priority for 2022, a year of the Tiger​. We know it may not feel easy, but that's why we are here to help you as a globally neutral actor, looking forward to helping you tackle your challenges one by one, "sitting with you on the same side of the table".

What could you get if your weekly startup ecosystem events were more effective and accurate attracting the right audience?
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Experienced ecosystem builders know: when you attract the right people in the events, you truly enable magic among them. To learn how technology can contribute to make this happen, register to the ecosystemOS protolab webinar​.

What will you get in this webinar?

This webinar is designed to bring our global community of ecosystem builders together and point them toward their next steps on the automation journey for startup ecosystem development. We will cover:

• How to use the startup development phases framework (SDP) in startup ecosystem communications as an easy way to improve the accuracy of communication
• How to apply the startup development phases at scale 
• How to use SDP classifier for automated ‘startup development phases’ -labelling for startup events 
• Future commercial steps

Ready to transform your ecosystem so you have more time to do what matters? Join us at ecosystemOS protolab webinar​ to enable automation and intelligence in your ecosystem to develop and orchestrate it faster and smarter.

Feel free to contact us  ([email protected]) in advance with your questions/suggestions. Don't miss this session out and book your place!