To integrate a higher order of human complexity, platform designers have a palette of perspectives from which to shape the intent and structure of ecosystems.
In our last post, we outlined several ways the developmental psychology framework Spiral Dynamics can aid platform thinking, including sense making, ideation, experience design, business modeling and shifting mindsets. In this post, we want to share more detail of how we use it today and how we envision it influencing the future of platform thinking.
From our interactions with the platform design community, we see growing interest in expanding the purpose and scope of platform design in response to “massive shifts in markets and society that are increasing the risk of social and political destabilization as a result of technological and cultural evolutions, and an increasing degradation of human habitat and related crises.”
The Future of Platforms — Zooming Out
Writing on the future of platforms, Platform Design Toolkit founder Simone Cicero states:
“The practice of platform-ecosystem thinking needs to be able to integrate a higher order of human systems complexity, the “civilization” level: it needs to zoom-out. We definitely need to understand how to tackle [ ] more “systemic” opportunities, that [ ] feature multiple sides and stakeholders, longer relationships between parties, usually bigger transactions and inherently call for more participative governance processes and the need for more skin-in-the-game for participants.”
This view of platform thinking is consistent with the trajectory of our work, which has focused primarily on the ecosystems that platforms enable. Our ecosystem design work focuses on platform intent, including the common purpose that attracts participants to collaborate in an ecosystem and the dimensions of value that make for more meaningful experiences. We stress the community as the primary source of value in an ecosystem and strive to design ecosystems whose business and organizational models are open, transparent, inclusive and regenerative.
Spiral Dynamics & Platform Design — Creating Community-centric, Regenerative Ecosystems
The current enthusiasm surrounding the platform thinking and ecosystem space is largely based on the expectation that an incumbent or start-up can become a platform aggregator and capture market value by connecting more and more niches of long tail producers and consumers. And yet, platform aggregation is highly susceptible to concentration with many dominant players already occupying the space. Incumbent aggregators like the FANG companies have a clear advantage with billions of current users. Would-be aggregators will likely need to find a niche not on the FANG companies’ radars or consider more inclusive alternatives like platform cooperatives that empower, rather than enable the long tail. Moreover, the platform space today is largely silent on the dependencies between its models and a finite amount of natural resources. Part of integrating a “higher order of human systems complexity” into platforms is building sustainability into their designs. With that said, we define the platforms of the future that empower long tails in a sustainable way as community-centric, regenerative ecosystems.
Given this direction, we recognize the importance of mindsets in setting the context of a platform ecosystem and modeling its structure. We stress developing a solid understanding of the symbiotic relationship between mindsets, technology innovation and societal shifts. Global Guerilla Report Founder, John Robb comments on this relationship:
“Big technological changes (i.e. platforms) are not just changing [ ] how we are communicating and how we are organizing, [they’re] rewiring our brains at a very deep level. [They’re] changing the way we think… [ ] We shape technology, then it shapes us.”
We lean heavily on Spiral Dynamics to make sense of the relationship between big technological and societal shifts and the role that mindsets play in that progression. Spiral Dynamics is very effective at expanding the context of a problem statement, raising awareness of complex interdependencies, connections and socioeconomic relationships. It also introduces new organizational concepts like hives and holons that go beyond common structures being considered today in platform design. Therefore, we see it as an invaluable tool for shaping the future of platform and ecosystem design.
Spiral Dynamics for Platform Design Toolkit
To illustrate how expanding mindsets can impact platform design, we will apply Spiral Dynamics to one of the leading platform design methodologies, Platform Design Toolkit (PDT). PDT helps designers create a platform strategy by understanding the existing ecosystem, analyzing interactions and developing learning paths and interactions for participants. Because tools guide the way a user thinks, it is valuable to incorporate Spiral Dynamics because it demonstrates ways of thinking to solve increasingly complex problems.
Overview of the PDT Process
The Platform Design Toolkit 2.2 process comprises four phases: Exploration, Strategy Design, Validation & Prototyping and Growth Hacking.
We think SD can enhance context setting and platform intent during the Exploration phase and augment business modelling during the Strategy Design and Validation & Prototyping phases. We will also share minor enhancements to the Strategy Design and Validation & Prototyping canvases that support a broader context from Exploration.
Exploration Phase
The Exploration phase is guided by a Unified Digital Market Theory that explains how markets and value chains are evolving into three categories: long tail markets of niche providers, platform aggregators and infrastructure providers. The platform shaper (designer) uses a number of tools and frameworks to reshape (platformize) an existing value chain within a number of common contexts and patterns. The overriding objective underlying this phase is to identify ways to reshape an economic value chain through personalization, elevating producers, standardizing transactions, automating complex processes as SaaS, leveraging identity, reputation and trust, and aggregating demand and supply.
During Exploration, we envision an expanded exercise or potentially pre-context platform tool based on Spiral Dynamics that enables designers/shapers to explore a broad set of intents and stakeholders to help clarify the intent of the platform and ecosystem.
For example, platformizing urban air mobility, which involves a complex value chain of regulators, cities, real estate, aerial taxi manufacturers and mobility as a service platform aggregators (orange vMeme), might also incorporate objectives to open the platform to prosumer innovations (green vMeme), deploy the solution as a commons (yellow vMeme) or operate at net zero carbon footprint (turquoise vMeme). Although rooted in the same experience, these contexts can lead the designer in different directions.
The context and intent-setting steps we envision include:
Step 1: Ask the designers to articulate their intent?—?what are the drivers of the design? Why are they motivated to change something? This creates initial common ground among the design team members.
Step 2: Identify a broad set of intentions and stakeholders based on vMemes within Spiral Dynamics. Below, we show zooming in vs. zooming out perspectives.
When visiting each point, identify constituents and their related challenges or strengths. For example, when urban air mobility designers reach resources/ biosphere, they should consider things like the atmosphere and fuel sources. Next, the designer considers the situation each stakeholder is in by noting down its challenges/risks and strengths/opportunities.
Identifying the stakeholders and their situation creates two major outcomes. First, the designers see that their design is part of many other systems. Second, it draws attention to subtle risks and opportunities like the impact on local communities and the commons. Anywhere the designers have limited insights to the reality of a stakeholder indicates a learning opportunity.
Step 3: Afterwards, the designers can revisit their original statement of intent. There should be few hesitations in updating it because at this point, not much has been invested into solving the design challenge.
Setting the context lets the designers see different viewpoints reflective of four vMemes. It also gives them space to decide for themselves what is important. A tool should help focus energy towards important work in creating a thriving world, but ultimately allow the user to choose what they feel empowered to tackle.
After setting the context in the Exploration phase, PDT’s Ecosystem Scan canvas organizes stakeholders based on their position in the Unified Digital Market Theory. An additional category in the theory and canvas could help include foundations like resources, communities and commons uncovered in Collective Intent, which generally fall outside of the industrial market scope. Roles across these categories translate as entries on the Wardley Map, which guides value chain-based platform opportunity analysis. The additional foundation category may uncover new possibilities and dependencies for platformization.
Strategy Design Phase
Step 1: Identify Reference Ecosystem
The goal of this step is to get a deeper understanding of the existing ecosystem being platformized; the premise is that a platform should enable an existing ecosystem by simplifying interactions and learning. The collective intent process described above provides a head start by listing additional stakeholders.
Another route of ecosystem exploration is to start with the Ecosystem Map to gather insights. Like the Ecosystem Scan, the map can be expanded to include the less obvious roles identified during Collective Intent. This leads to a set of Role Portraits that bring insights of each role’s needs, desires and pressures. This is a more detailed exploration of the challenges/strength questioning we suggest during Exploration. In addition, the categories in the portraits are meant to capture the needs, goals and aspirations of an entity. Based on SD mindsets, we know that each one upholds a different set of values, illustrated in the figure at right, and any single entity can embody all at once. The goals and values captured by the Role Portrait could be broadened to consider the many dimensions of value that any role can hold.
Step 2: Identify Value Exchanges
In the step to identify value exchanges, hotspots are identified to clarify where the biggest platform potential lies. The expanded Ecosystem Map brings critical stakeholders into this analysis that may have previously been overlooked. Exchanges between government, business, communities, society and the environment could be included here.
Step 3: Designing the Two Engines
The two engines of a platform are the transaction and learning engines. The transaction engine facilitates exchanges of any type and the learning engine provides paths for participants to learn and grow. While including new types of non-human constituencies, the learning engine concept could become something like a continuous improvement engine where the designer thinks about paths to support the development of human and non-human systems.
Step 4: Design the Experience
When designing the experience, the Platform Experience and MVP Canvases organize core participant journeys with a minimalistic business model. This prepares the designer to start iterating both. Because business models inextricably impact platform participants by directing value flows in regenerative or extractive ways, the MVP Canvas could include a section for the MVP business model that can be tested along with the experience during validation.
Step 5: Design the Model
Designing platforms to address complex societal problems requires the intent to permeate the idea and model behind it, including the business, organizational and governance models. For example, both Amazon and Openbazaar create a product marketplace. Amazon’s fees and ownership of customer interactions in exchange for a channel to customers can extract more from suppliers than they benefit, eventually squeezing them out. Meanwhile, decentralized alternatives like Openbazaar offer listings for free. This shows that the same platform idea can create very different dynamics based on how the platform is monetized, governed and organized and the platform’s longevity depends upon its ability to support and adapt to the ecosystem.
SD offers valuable insights for how designers might develop models that sustainably support the interconnected ecosystems of a platform design. Spiral Dynamics uncovers not only how individual mindsets change, but also how organizational models evolve to solve increasingly more complex problems. We translate that insight into a progression of reference models with supporting examples.
To start with something relatable, we depict the progression of models through an industry’s transformation. The music companies below each align to a SD-based model, and the SD based values are reflected in their published mission.
The examples above correlate to the SD progression of models. These structures include matrixed hierarchies (prosperity vMeme), networks (community vMeme), hives (interdependence vMeme) and holons (harmony vMeme).
Each model can be understood through its structure and flows. The structure demonstrates, loosely, how participants connect and establish relationships. Flows distribute things like information, decision making power, motivational energy, data and value across participants. The figures below show both representative structures and flows. The connecting arrows have varying thicknesses to indicate the relative magnitude and concentration of flow. Designers can first consider which structure might best suit their intent. After establishing a structure, business model and governance decisions determine the magnitude of flow among participants.
Thinking about platform structure and flow distribution compliments the growth hacking phase of PDT by addressing what the designer and ecosystem does with the results of growth?—?where and how much of the revenue, data etc. goes to each platform role. This, in combination with how participants engage with the platform, influences whether a design is regenerative or not. If the magnitude of flow is too small toward certain participants, they will struggle under an extractive system, or conversely can be part of a highly circulatory system where the magnitudes of flow are balanced to sustain all participants.
After this final step within Strategy & Design, the growth hacking phase begins, where the Platform Design Toolkit canvases end and lean startup testing and validation begins. With this amended process, the platform designer will have considered the implications of any growth and network effects they create to develop an appropriate model for our shared future.
Conclusion
Overall, we think Spiral Dynamics is an invaluable tool to support the evolution of Platform Thinking and Ecosystem Design. It facilitates zooming out in a way that helps designers and platform shapers prepare for the future. We welcome thoughts and ideas from platform thinkers, ecosystem designers and/or Spiral Dynamics/Organizational Design practitioners. We would love to hear from you!