Hi there,
Let me start by saying that I have never built an ecosystem before. But I have built a startup. And I believe that building an ecosystem is not much different than building a startup. In fact, the two have so many similarities that I will use startup analogy to explain how I think an ecosystem should be built.

I would define an ecosystem as an environment in which a startup can thrive by being able to operate with minimal friction. Such environment is originated by a source, often being an establishment aiming to create economic value out of it [the company]. In most recent cases, that source is a government trying to attract investments and increase jobs. That source can do so by solving a problem of inconvenience for a startup [the customer] to set-up, operate, and scale.

That establishment would set value hypotheses on the issues its customers are facing, along with potential solutions to them [leap of faith assumptions] and would try to test each solution through small experiments [minimal viable product].

A startup sometimes builds a community that maybe had never existed before and nurtures it until it can sustain itself, then it steps back and empowers the community, and watches it grow. As much as we’d love to believe that an ecosystem is formed organically, reality enforces that an establishment [i.e. government] has to take initiative and put building blocks for it.

A startup has to keep itself in check every day by getting feedback and data from its customers on how it’s doing. The startup must ensure that such feedback and data is true and accurate, not just customers saying what they want to hear. In fact, the startup must search for the criticism and points of improvement rather than compliments on what it has done right. In the same context, a government must do the same to its customers [i.e. startups] to ensure that it’s on the right track in proving the value hypotheses.

A startup doesn’t care for PR, page views, events attended, or other vanity metrics, but rather for actionable metrics that measure true results like purchases, subscriptions, or metrics that lead up to those. The same way, government must clarify its metrics while building an ecosystem. Is it Startups attracted? Investment funds established? Startup jobs created? In simple words, the results should be output, not activities leading to the output.

A startup can build the perfect product in a year, or launch a limited simple version in a month to test its leap of faith assumptions. If the startup invests too much money and resources in its initial product release, it might all go to waste as the team realizes that the customer doesn’t find value in the product, or that the problem isn’t as important as they thought. Exactly like that, governments should stop trying to solve the “big problems” with the perfect solutions, and start being shameless about launching minimal versions of programs, policies, and initiatives to test them and improve them with time. Build, Measure, Learn cycle must be enforced.

I can go on, but you get the point. These are the main problems I see with the process of building the ecosystem(s) I’m involved in. I’m not inventing anything new here. All the terminology used is based off of The Lean Startup methodology by Eric Ries. I think anyone who’s involved in building an ecosystem should read that book.