07. Techniques to Work with Ecosystems for Innovation

Understand ecosystems, uncover their dynamics and know some of the ways to innovate these.

Innovation today rarely happens within the boundaries of a single organisation, product, or function. It increasingly emerges within innovation ecosystems – networks of actors, value exchanges, and interdependencies that shape how value is created, delivered, circulated, and evolved.

Fundamentals of Ecosystems for Innovation invites you to understand ecosystems as a foundation for innovation exploration, especially in contexts where innovation depends on multiple participants rather than isolated efforts.

The course guides you to know what ecosystems are from an innovation perspective, how they are framed, and how their internal dynamics influence opportunities for change. Attention is placed on actors, value exchanges, formats of value, and flows of interaction that together enable or constrain innovation.

Rather than focusing on isolated ideas or linear value chains, the course helps you look at innovation as a system of interactions and evolving value flows—supporting a shift toward value networks where multiple entities co-create and exchange value simultaneously.

You will know some of the ways to define an ecosystem’s envelope, identify its entities (actors), and make sense of the exchanges that connect them, including both tangible and intangible forms of value.

Using structured frameworks such as ecosystem maps, entity profiles, and exchange maps, the course shows how ecosystems can be depicted clearly – making value flows visible and innovation conversations more grounded.

The course then highlights common triggers that prompt ecosystem-level innovation. These triggers help surface opportunities to redesign value exchanges, reconfigure value networks, and move beyond two-sided interactions toward multi-sided business models, including platform and ecosystem-based approaches.

Designed as part of a broader innovation journey, this course supports professionals seeking systematic approaches to innovation exploration—especially in strategy, product management, design, transformation, and innovation facilitation.

By the end of the course, you will have a structured way of looking at ecosystems that strengthens innovation inputs and enables clearer decisions about where and how innovation can emerge.