So, I'd like to introduce you to the next mapping tool here. It's the *ecosystem mapping*. It's a template that you can use. It's also a group activity. To start with, let's look at this quote here from the newly appointed CEO of Nokia in 2011. And he said this: What he pointed to there is this problem
that every business faces when they're delivering a service, which is the relationship and dependencies of the entire ecosystem. Now, at this stage, Microsoft acquired Nokia, and so they inherited this particular problem. But I think it illustrates the point that we're looking for here – which is:
What's going on in your *entire* ecosystem? And how are you going to deal with that in terms of creating a service that really resonates with customers? So, I like to define the ecosystem as those who are *bringing* the experience to the customer. Some people define ecosystem with "the customers" or "the users" and I don't think that's helpful; so,
I would like to define ecosystem as *those who are manufacturing the experience*. So, think of it as the employers, employees, supply chain, suppliers, contractors – everyone that goes into making that, building *that stage* – you know – making that thing perform. It's the *things they're doing* and the *value they're bringing*. It's the *information* that they need or
use or require or share; the *people* or systems that *they* interact with, the *services* that are available to them, the *devices* that they might use and the channels they might communicate with. So, in Amazon's case, they have their own delivery kind of ecosystem. That's my truck.
The Amazon ecosystem delivery is actually UPS and FedEx as well as USPS, the US postal service. But they've also added *private drivers*. So, they have private drivers It looks like somebody's dad, somebody's father driving the truck. So, you have *that* going on. And then you have the *kiosk* that takes / that inputs the packages. Behind there, there's the *database*. So, there's a system there.
From that database, there's an email notification. The email notification goes up, pings the customer and sends that email to the customer. The customer gets it on their device and so forth. We also have the infrastructure over here, so the drivers got their own special Amazon app. There's some kind of logistics happening here behind the scenes. So, you get the general idea. It's mapping everything that's happening in the ecosystem:
all the actors all the roles, all the stuff that's going on and looking for where the dependencies are and where the breakpoints are that occur within that ecosystem – very very important. And if you *don't* do ecosystem mapping, then it's my belief that you're not really leveraging the whole set of tools that service design affords. Ecosystem mapping is as *important as personas*. With the ecosystem map, you want to start with your *current state*.
It's not a map of the future, desired state. It's where you're at *now*. It's about understanding all the connections that occur in all those dependencies. It's about understanding how stakeholders, databases, devices, products, services – how everything kind of maps together and how that information flows and the exchange of value that occurs between – you know – all these different actors that are going on here
and – yeah – it's a *group activity*; just like a lot of service design things, you're showing here with your team. Now, here's an example from the Fiat Group in Italy – the Fiat Design Group – and they mapped out the future of transportation. So, they actually looked at the future side of things. And you can do that, but first do the *current* picture view.
It's important to – you know – *don't dream out what could be*; *understand what you have to deal with*. Now, Fiat's group actually added the what, why, how, who, when and where of the situation and then looked at the ecosystem across these different lenses that you can see here in this example. The activity here is to take your group and start *drawing* this out.
Each person will draw their *own* version of this. So, if you have a big white board – if you have a big one of these – you'll put them all together. Then each person presents to the group because you're going to see similarities and differences – and you can note those, write those down. Post those to a wall and draw the connections between all the individual maps, so you have so many different ones. And then use this alongside your journey maps and use it to guide your service blueprint. The ecosystem map is you building up to your service blueprint.
And instead of jumping into the surface blueprint, this is about doing your due diligence to *dig deeper* and find out what exactly is happening in that vital ecosystem.