How Ecosystem Collaboration Enables Successful Innovation

Many people believe that it is always competition that drives innovation in business. While that might often be true, it is certainly not in all cases - and very much not true in industries and ecosystems that are heavily entrenched in their current complexity, like healthcare or media.

One such innovation that has all the ingredients to be quite successful thanks to a very collaborative ecosystem is Magine TV, a 'cable TV in the cloud', or 'Spotify for TV', that originates from Sweden. While Magine TV technically does not do much else than what Aero or Boxee (acquired by Samsung) offer as a cloud based personal digital video recorder as a third part over-the-top (OTT) service, they found an ecosystem of TV providers open to collaboration (though still in beta). First in Sweden and then in Germany and Spain plenty of providers, like CNN, BBC, Eurosport, National Geographic etc, are willing to let Magine TV distribute their content in the most consumer friendly way:

• Cheap: less than $15/month
• Convenient: works on any device
• Compelling: strong, live content

Obviously, for the large broadcasters to agree, the technology needs to be secure from pirating and compatible with existing advertising and media processes.

The other ecosystem happy to work with Magine TV is the consumer electronics industry, especially the TV manufacturers. As they have created platforms within the TV that allow for apps to operate seamlessly in the TV user experience, for Samsung, LG, Panasonic and TP Vision to bring this innovative solution into their boxes is a straightforward approach.

Over here in the US, the broadcaster ecosystem is the opposite from collaborative and innovators are quickly confrontational, as visible in the case of Aero that is in constant legal battle with Fox, CBS and NBC. While such confrontation might be the nurturing ground for more inventions to circumvent the manifold barriers to change, successful innovation (i.e. inventions that are broadly commercialized) is slowed down dramatically.

It seems like a sensible approach to analyze the state of an ecosystem in regards to its ability to collaborate to assess the opportunity for change - and with that the success of companies operating there.

The other ecosystem to look at through this lens is healthcare. But more on that later.

(most insight gained from the report at The Register)