EP530 Building an Ecosystem Playbook with Christine Griffin

We had Hubert Joly on the show a few months, probably a year ago now in an absolutely excellent episode on his book.

Before i introduce today's guest i want to thank the sponsor of the corporate explorer series Wazoku, Wazoku helps large organizations create sustainable innovation ecosystems. Accelerate efficiency gains and new value growth it does this through intelligent enterprise software that connects and harnesses the power of employees suppliers startups universities and the unique Wazoku crowd of 700, 000 global problem solvers. Wazoku calls this connected, collective intelligence.

And I'm so glad so many of you listeners to the innovation show have reached out and got in touch with Wazoku. And if you are interested in their tools, I'll connect you straight to the source CEO, Simon Hill. You can find Wazoku at www. Wazoku. com.

Speaking of ecosystems and connected collective intelligence today's episode is called ecosystems building an ecosystem playbook for scaling a new venture and we're joined by the co author of the corporate explorer field book , A colleague of tushman o'reilly bins and the whole nine yards christine griffin welcome to the show

i thought we'd, give an overview of this chapter christine and give context to this case study of best buy. And then unpack those six steps i'll see you up here because you say best buys footprint in home health. Expanded as a result of acquisitions like Great Call, Current Health, Biosensics, and others, but nevertheless Best Buy rapidly realized that acquisitions were only one part of the story.

Success could involve building partnerships with payers and providers, such as Anthem, Athena Health, And Geisinger, let's share the six lessons derived from this best buy story. And indeed the context that any corporate explorer can apply to increase this odds of success with an ecosystem, let me start with the story about Best Buy,, and then we'll get into the steps. , In 2018, Best Buy set its sights on the home health market.

They wanted to provide home health to 5 million people within 5 years. , Their plan was to deliver, install, and activate the technology that was needed to enable the care at home, and they realized that they couldn't do it alone. Healthcare is a really complex ecosystem, it has many providers, payers, regulators, suppliers of medical equipment, pharmaceutical companies, and Best Buy knew that they couldn't do it alone.

However, they decided that they wanted to create a footprint in this market.

, they did that initially Through acquisitions. They purchased a company called Great Call, which sold the personal emergency response devices that they had in their store already. If you remember, there was a commercial in the U S a while ago that said, you know, They pushed a button on something they wore around their neck and it said, I've fallen and I can't get up. And the help was dispatched.

They also purchased a company called critical signals technology, which was telehealth and medication management. And finally another of their biggest acquisitions was current health. And that was a care at home technology platform. , And so they established for themselves an initial footprint. in this market.

They realized is that they needed to win the hearts and minds of the providers and of the payers in this system. And so, when you talk to Debra DeSanso, who's the CEO of Best Buy Health, she'll tell you that they have carved out their specific role in this ecosystem, again, as someone who will deliver, install, and activate the technology needed. to enable care at home.

And Deborah says, boy,, all , this, you know, the CIOs and the people at the payers and providers were very happy because they didn't have to have the headache of going into a customer's home and helping them, install the technology and understand how to use it and help set it up. So they took that headache away from those providers and the payers in their ecosystem, and they also made it clear that they were not there to provide the care.

And that would have been seen as like a competitive problem in the ecosystem. So what you've seen them do is identify what activities are going on in the market.

They have identified The players in the market and the potential partners and the potential competitors in that market, and they have started to build this ecosystem play where the value is being delivered to all of the partners in the ecosystem, but also to that end consumer, which is the person who really desires to have care at home.

And so what I'd like to do is talk you through some of the steps that you go through when you're trying to figure out what is this ecosystem that I'm operating in, and how should I participate in the ecosystem?

But you reminded me of a brilliant friend of the show, Charles Conn and Charles Conn is speaking at our reinvention summit in 2025 as well. I cannot wait. Charles is also the chairman of Patagonia and he wrote this book, the imperfectionists, and he talks about this, how really clever companies, they don't just jump in.

, they take these steps, these clever steps into a new arena, just like Best Buy did, and he talks about Amazon, and I just wanted to share because I'll share the links to those two shows for people who are interested in this ecosystem building. Because this is becoming increasingly the role of the corporate explorer to be the orchestrator of this as well . This chapter is so important for corporate explorers. Over to you, Christine.

I'm going to share on the screen the diagram where you bring us through the steps, and I'd love you to take us through the steps now through the lens of what you described with Best Buy..

You know, This, this idea of healthcare information being electronically transferred is highly regulated and very important for privacy. And so this platform that Best Buy has is HIPAA certified. So in this first step, you map the value creation journey. So in each step, for example, you need to engage the, person at home in the program, you need to help them install the solutions. to monitor what's going on in the home to coordinate that care and to provide insights and analytics.

And so understanding the flow of, you know, where do people find value in the exchange of care at home is the very first step. And so taking time to map that and understand it is pretty important. , The next thing you want to do is think about where are the break points in this program. , where do users struggle? Where do providers or of these services or suppliers struggle? , For example, in the healthcare system, technology may be too complex.

You know, Maybe people are struggling to try to use a heart monitor or a blood pressure monitor at home and they need help figuring out not only how do I install and use this, but like how do I plug it into a place where. The data can be reported remotely to other people. And, you know, if you're coming home from a hospital and to, and to care at home, , you're already in a pretty, vulnerable state of mind.

And so, , being able to identify the break points in a system and another one that, that happened for Best Buy is that, urgent events need first responders. To come. So when you press that personal alert, that says I've fallen and I can't get up, there needs to be somebody on the other end who says, okay, I'm coming, you know, just I'll be there in a minute. And so that idea of identifying break points, that's really like the 1st critical part of this thing.

For proximity with Kaihan Krippendorf and Rob C. Walcott, and they talked about how many of these innovations it's so difficult to get somebody to try it the first time. And sometimes you need the benefit of a crisis like the pandemic to get us to even use tools like zoom and Microsoft teams. And I'm using squad cast here. Many, many people didn't use those tools until the crisis pushed them. And then they had no choice, but to use that. And I think that's really interesting to realize is there.

A break point there where people just won't, it's not good enough for them to have to change. So they'll just use a lesser version of what you have to offer, even if yours is way better that these are things that you only really get to by mapping it out and going through these steps.

So the people who providing and supplying, complementary products or channels, there's regulators that you have to think about, particularly in this example of health there are intermediaries. Who are people who are in between. So they could be someone who's selling your product. It's, it could be a wholesaler or a distributor who is selling your product to someone. It could be an integrator. So somebody who puts all the pieces together to deliver some value to that end user.

And it could be an orchestrator. And that, that is someone that I, a role that , Best Buy talks about playing, you know, they have this platform, this digital HIPAA certified platform that they use that enables all of the participants to kind of come onto that platform and coordinate the care. Data is exchanged, services are changed.

They have omni channels, you can go to a store to buy some products, you can go online to buy products, so mapping The players, and then also understanding what is your interface or what's the interface between those players? Are you selling through them? Are you selling with them? Are you co innovating , in the case of Best Buy Health, they are working closely with Anthem and they're working closely with , Mass General to be sure to be able to , Deliver care in an integrated way.

So they're co innovating side by side. They worked through pilots and then they ended up, you know, scaling farther into the market. So this idea of really understanding who are the players, what role are they playing and how are we interacting with them? And then here's the really important thing. Show me the money,

So useful to be able to map where the value is in your ecosystem and where do you play and derive value

If you think about some of the , the pieces of the Best Buy ecosystem, you think that , there are payers , who want to reduce the. , they want to reduce the cost that's being incurred , that they have to cover. If you think about the providers, they want compliance. They want compliance from different , patients who are at home. They want compliance with the processes that they're trying to use or install. And . so, , think about the incentives. And most often people want, Cost control.

They want some kind of health quality. They want the quality of services , and , they are getting paid for their against those dimensions. Sometimes there are, ,, players who, the innovation poses a risk for them. Maybe it's not, in this case, well controlled. The quality is not well controlled or , maybe the innovation is gonna compete directly with some of the services that players. , Provide themselves. So they see the innovation as a risk.

, And you think about like, so where is money in this flow? And how much is it? And one time I was mapping a system with a client and , they've mapped the system and they said where they played and then they realized that all the money was being made in the other parts of the value chain.

, we fall in love with our own ideas sometimes, and we don't want to go through this cause we don't want to prove it wrong, but it is part of the process.

So after you figure out the money flow , you start to build your scaling path. And we talked in the beginning about deciding what your entry, what your entry point is. And for a Best Buy, it was this, you know, personal emergency um, services, and they acquired that position. Um, They acquired, they acquired the technology, the call centers to support it. and they started to think about, now what are the other capabilities that That we need, who are the customers that we need to serve?

How can we broaden our reach beyond people who are just using these personal emergency And how can we capacity? They started with this acquisition, having a certain number of call centers. And then they ended up building more of their own call centers in order to support network. When you think about this when you think about the idea of a scaling path, you're, you're trying to start from what is our, what's the entry point and What are What are the steps that we take?

Aiden, I think you'll put up path. The capacity is about this ability to manage volume. So it's around fulfillment, manufacturing, customer call centers, and customer service. The other thing to think about is what are the capabilities that you need to draw on? What are the technologies, the products, or the Even business models that you need. Maybe you need to move from a fee for service subscription model. What different things that you need to be able to do?

finally, like customers are your customers just the original end user? Are they, are these the suppliers that are helping provide that service and really thinking about how do you get access to more customers? And that's the way you, that's the fundamental steps of building a scaling path.

And I say that to say, I'm sure you see this work with change logic where, when you're working with organizations.

Oftentimes you're hired by strategy or by innovation people inside the organization, but I really truly believe L and D and H or they need a seat at that table because they too will have to bring in new leadership programs and find budget to be able to train people in this new mindset and also HR might realize actually, you know what we need to hire new people inside the organization.

This is somewhere that's so often overlooked, and because of the siloed nature of large organizations, they overlook this such crucial step.

But, part of it is is preparing those stakeholders very early in the process to be able to understand what it's going to take to scale this so that you don't want to show up someday with a multi billion dollar request for investment. You want to hold their hand and bring them through the journey with you. And Therefore, it's important to think about what your scaling path is from the very beginning. Have a hypothesis about where this might go.

And it may be multiple different hypotheses that you have about how you're going to scale this business. And, that it can be, are you going to build some of these parts? Are you going to partner with other people? Are you going to buy it? And what are the customers capabilities and capacities that you're going to need?

So set that frame early on and that you won't give people a heart attack end when you when you ask for money, because when you get to scaling, you're probably asking for a lot more money than you have in the past

Bring us through the stages and indeed the case study of Best Buy. Again, I highly recommend it. It's there behind me on the shelf. The corporate explorer field book. And indeed the first book, the corporate explorer, absolutely brilliant reads. Christine, for people who want to find you, find out more about your work, maybe lean into this area of expertise you have about building ecosystems. Where's the best place to find you?