Strategic Flexibility in Ecosystem

Abstract

Flexibility at the level of the enterprise alone would not be effective until the rest of the ecosystem is also flexible. The highest level of flexibility maturity would lie in the strategic flexibility for the ecosystem as a whole. The ecosystem of technology, partners, suppliers, market, regulators, application providers, financiers, and many other relevant actors and processes would create strategic flexibility for innovation, new product development, new market creation, and meeting unforeseen changes in the environment. This leads to multiple types of flexibilities such as marketing flexibility to reach out to the users in a variety of ways, financial flexibility of choosing the right payment option, combination flexibility of packaging multiple services, change flexibility of amendment and cancellation of bookings made with minimum penalties, reach flexibility to take decisions anytime–anywhere, and logistics flexibility of tracking the order. It would be interesting as well as challenging to carry out the valuation of strategic flexibility in the ecosystem, which is far more complex than valuation of flexibility initiatives taken by a single enterprise.