Ecosystem strategy and scenarios for a network of steel industry companies
Nordic steel and engineering companies
Globally operating steel and engineering companies were looking to establish a multi-sided platform ecosystem. They needed support in understanding the potential development paths for the platform and create a shared vision.
Because the ecosystem would be one of the pioneers on the market, its strategy could influence which of the future scenarios would materialize. To build an optimal platform strategy, the possibility of proactively shaping the market should be accounted for.
Success criteria:
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Create a shared vision for a multisided platform
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Develop robust strategy-portfolio across different scenarios
We built a scenario-based decision model to identify robust and proactive strategies for the platform.
The companies had developed three alternative scenarios for the operational environment. We helped the companies ideate altogether 23 strategic actions that would enable success in each scenario. To prioritize between these actions, we built a decision analytic model to identify strategies that would be robust across alternative scenarios for the future operational environment, and proactive in that they would help steer the future toward the desired direction.
Our approach helped create a shared view among platform partners about necessary investments and strategic options.
Our systematic approach to scenario-based strategy development helped accommodate the views and beliefs of all participating companies in a transparent way. Our model also generated tangible and actionable decision recommendations by categorizing the proposed strategic actions into three groups: (i) actions that the ecosystem should pursue immediately, (ii) strategic options in which the ecosystem should make smaller, initial investments to be possibly expanded later, and (iii) actions that should not be pursued at all with current resources.
"We found core actions that should definitely be pursued and exterior actions that should not. This helped us focus further discussions and additional work on a smaller set of actions whose impacts were the most uncertain."
— Project member, platform strategy
"Instead of being reactive, proactive view allows us to avoid suboptimal solutions."
— Project member, platform strategy