Crowds, clouds, collaborators and competitors: Digital ecosystems are uniting disparate participants to target bigger and better outcomes. While the ability of ecosystems to enhance value creation and amplify impact is well-regarded in business, their potential to drive public good is quickly coming into focus.
This is because digital ecosystems promote greater comprehension, better-coordinated responses and appropriately committed resources between a huge range of stakeholders. Ultimately, this kind of novel collaboration paves the way for global initiatives that make the impossible possible in the public sector.
Case in point: sustainability. Digital ecosystems and the orchestration of large value networks are emerging as our only real chance to reach the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Powered by accelerative technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, the cloud and the internet of things, digital ecosystems successfully marry forward-thinking partners and cutting-edge technologies to tackle the biggest threats that humanity faces today. Here’s how digital ecosystems work to achieve core elements of the SDGs before the end of the decade deadline.
Inspire responsible consumption and production
By their nature, ecosystems bring multiple disparate participants together. Whether these participants primarily collaborate or compete with one another, the group’s collective power is undoubtedly more than what any individual could achieve on their own. This sense of teamwork is especially important when it comes to moving towards a more circular economy.
Unlike the predominant model of consumption, which uses up finite resources to drive seemingly unlimited growth, the circular economy is based on regenerating natural systems and keeping existing products and materials in use. Ecosystems also often result in new technologies that can power sustainability initiatives, making it easier and more efficient than ever before to keep things circular.
To drive circular economy processes, public and private actors need to convene around an ecosystem to collaborate, transact and create a closed-loop system. This system should extend the life cycle of assets by collecting waste for reuse and connecting participants across the network to those reused materials.
Digital ecosystems promote greater comprehension, better-coordinated responses and appropriately committed resources between a huge range of stakeholders.
For example, a digital ecosystem in this context might connect raw material to suppliers, refurbished assets to resellers and used parts to manufacturers. A connected and expanded ecosystem will allow enterprises to individually and collectively accelerate their journey towards circular business processes. Technologies such as blockchain can help here by instilling trust and transparency across the whole product life cycle.
One key area where this can have an impact is plastic recycling. Around 90 percent of plastic used is not recycled — and reducing this number is crucial to achieving SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production.
However, ecosystems are already showing promise in this domain: Plastic Bank’s goal is to create value from waste is one example. The startup has created a recycling ecosystem tracked by blockchain where members receive a premium for the materials they collect, which in turn helps them provide basic family necessities such as groceries, school tuition and health insurance. This not only benefits members but also allows major global companies such as SC Johnson and Henkel access ethically sourced, recycled “social plastic” for use in packaging. Not to mention, this results in reduced production costs for those companies as they don’t have to resort to raw materials to build new products.
Promote good health and wellbeing
The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented stumbling block on the path to achieving SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages. Millions of people have lost their lives, public health systems have been overwhelmed, and the psychological and economic impact of social distancing restrictions has wrought havoc in the lives of millions if not billions of people.
As the pandemic rages on in countries that are yet to vaccinate the masses, many people remain unable or afraid to go to health facilities. One example where digital ecosystems are helping fight the problem here is telehealth. Ecosystems of patients, providers and payors are moving online not only to respond to the pandemic but to improve health outcomes across the board.
Ping An Good Doctor has created a healthcare ecosystem in China that champions telemedicine innovations. Integrating seamlessly with offline medical services within the ecosystem, the platform offers online consultations with AI-assisted teams of doctors. Astonishingly, Ping An Good Doctor had 373 million total users and an average of 903,000 daily inquiries by December. With telemedicine adoption soaring during the pandemic, this system can provide medical services to some of the country’s most remote areas.
What’s more, Ping An Good Doctor recognizes that it needs to join digital innovations with offline health providers to maximize its impact: Its ecosystem’s offline network contains 151,000 pharmacies, 49,000 clinics and over 3,700 hospitals. This allows the platform to provide additional services such as hospital referrals and inpatient arrangements, exemplifying perfectly the value of disparate participants in a given ecosystem.
Provide access to clean water
Access to clean water is fundamental for human health and communities when it comes to food security, peace processes, human rights and good education. Shockingly, 2.2 billion people around the world don’t have access to safely managed drinking water services and over half the global population lack safe sanitation. Water management, security and quality are key to SDG 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
One example of an ecosystem helping to achieve this global goal is RAIN (Replenish Africa Initiative), The Coca-Cola Foundation’s flagship African community program. RAIN’s goal is to improve the lives of over 6 million people in Africa through water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs, with a focus on addressing specific community needs. It’s not just The Coca-Cola Foundation doing this work — the nonprofit organization works with a network of over 100 partners including governments, the private sector and civil society to be able to expand community access to water and sanitation, promote the productive use of water and drive watershed protection projects. All stakeholders benefit from this ecosystem: Communities get their needs met, Coca-Cola achieves its altruistic goals and nonprofits receive vital funding to meet their objectives in the region.
Another example of ecosystems driving progress comes from SweetSense’s IoT technology, which helps manage water infrastructures across east Africa. The solution combines sensors with cellular and satellite internet cloud reporting connectivity. It aims to close the information gap, enable better decision making and response times, and financial sustainability. SweetSense can provide these services because it works in partnership with private, public and nonprofit organizations. It runs its systems on a carrier-agnostic network, which allows it to analyze device performance and access custom reports.
The SDGs act as an urgent call for action to end poverty, improve health and education, reduce inequality, spur economic growth, tackle climate change, and preserve our oceans and forests. Of course, achieving these lofty goals by the decade’s end will be no easy task — it means seriously ramping up many ongoing initiatives and firm commitments from the consumer all the way up to global institutions. This is where ecosystems play a crucial role: The innovation that they enable gives rise to global initiatives that have a true impact.
As cloud, AI and hybrid technologies become more accessible, the disruptive power of ecosystems will go a long way to helping us achieve goals once thought impossible. The public and private sectors have a unique opportunity, and a great responsibility, to come together in tackling some of humanity’s most pressing issues.
