Ecosystems: All systems…oh!

I’ve spent enough time attending analyst summits and conducting telephone interviews with the Big Four in the past year, to know that ecosystems are a really big deal for them. Like, a really really big deal.

Along the way I’ve been genuinely impressed, not only by the network of relationships they’ve been building, but also by the humility they’ve shown in doing so. After all, humility may be a precondition for building a successful ecosystem in the first place, but it’s something for which the Big Four (or any big consulting firm, for that matter) haven’t hitherto been particularly famous. Frankly, trying to get a big consulting firm to admit that it doesn’t have all the capability its clients need in house, and might need help from someone else, has been like trying to get an alpha-male to read an instruction manual.

What’s more, it’s been made very clear to me that these ecosystems are seen as a virtue about which the Big Four want to shout from the rooftops. This isn’t just a defensive move on their part, though it’s doubtless that, too, but something that they appear to want to put front and centre in the way they market themselves to their clients. “We’ve allied our capabilities to those of designers, coders, thinkers, innovators and hipsters in order to help you solve your biggest and most pressing challenges” they seem to be saying.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was sitting with the procurement team of a massive blue chip recently and found them looking back at me with vacant expressions when I asked if they’d heard much about ecosystems from any of the Big Four. The conversation went on for a while, but their response can pretty adequately be summed up in one word: nothing.

Not that they weren’t interested, you understand. On the contrary–this is exactly the sort of thing they’d be really interested about as they prepared themselves to address some of their biggest growth-related challenges, they told me. From their point of view the chance to access a network of entrepreneurs, disruptors, and innovators through their existing relationships with big, trusted, strategic partners sounded hugely attractive. But they’d heard nothing.

Part of the answer to this seems to lie in a disconnect between what firms are saying to themselves, and what they’re saying to their clients. Either people simply aren’t getting the memo, or, when push comes to shove, the alpha-male is being asked to stand in front of the person he most wants to impress, and admit that he diligently reads instruction manuals. And just can’t.

But it might also be because they haven’t found a way to convince the client that an ecosystem approach will actually work. The procurement team went on to say that they had, in fact, seen a pitch from a smaller firm, that was eventually rejected by the board, in part because of the role an ecosystem was going to play in the project. The board apparently thought it sounded like a recipe for trouble, and decided to go with a firm that claimed to have all the necessary capability in house.

Either way, the message where ecosystems are concerned seems clear: You’ve got to do a lot more than just build it if you want them to come.