Organising for digital transformation: Ecosystems, platforms, and future states

The systematic combination of interdependent technologies forms the basis of the cyber-physical systems that underpin its digital transformation. New business ecosystems and meta-organisations, such as platforms, are transforming industries widely and are underpinned by digital innovations. This chapter discusses related organising mechanisms and proposes a methodology for generating them in the built environment. It presents business ecosystems, using empirical examples from a range of industries to illustrate how they evolve and operate. The chapter also discusses these principles by contrasting the approaches taken by 'digital natives', to those incumbent firms that develop ecosystems through evolutionary processes. Designers achieve modularity by precisely partitioning information into visible design rules and hidden design parameters. The approach to organising for digitalisation differs between new entrants and incumbent firms. Designing with future states in the forefront is a freeing experience because it removes the design team from the addiction of the latest trend.