In the wood industry, we see time and again that the small carpenter and the large industrial furniture manufacturer have more than one thing in common: Not only do they work with wood materials, both require machines and tools from a wide variety of manufacturers in their productions.

And it is precisely the latter circumstance that presents many players in the wood industry with the challenge of setting up the diversity of their value chain digitally and efficiently - without horrendous costs or endless effort.

In the podcast "Platforms for Future" with Nathalie Dumas Lamborghini and Matthias Walter, Christian Neumann took on exciting questions around our ecosystem idea.

You can listen to the entire podcast episode on Spotify

A small foretaste of the podcast's content can be found here in the blog post:

The balance of everybody being a winner in the ecosystem

We learned in the past, that putting the user at the center is a key success driver. Identifying pain points and solving them is key. Then, we connect the actors who are needed to find a solution to the pain points. From our experience, we know that it requires more than one actor to solve a problem holistically. Trying to find an answer all alone cannot be the standard in a connected world. In this approach, all parties still have the opportunity to concentrate on their actual expertise and do not have to deal with technology platforms individually. Positive network effects are created for all players instead of one-dimensional silo solutions.

We are convinced that it needs this ecosystem approach with its diverse partners to create answers and subsequently business cases for everyone involved: The user, the partner, and the ecosystem provider. Only then we are able to create a triple win. Each actor participating needs to win otherwise the ecosystem cannot flourish. However, besides economic benefits there are more principles needed to create a winning ecosystem.

Establishing ground rules

The ground rules of an ecosystem should focus on governance and the concept of data ownership. Remember, in physical reality we own our assets but in the data world, this ownership is not automatically the case. Thus, we at tapio put a lot of effort in establishing these ground rules and principles. Take this as an example: If a carpenter connects his/her woodworking machine to the digital ecosystem, the machine provides data. The important thing is that the carpenter him-/herself decides which applications his/her own data is sent to. Only then, he/she is able to use this data inside an application, for example, to make production more efficient. In general, it is important to us, that the user is in the driver seat to decide in which digital service he/she wants to share the data with.

In My tapio the customer has an interface where he can manage his digital world. This is – besides the contractual side – technology-wise an enforcement of the tapio ground rules.

If you want to learn more about data sharing in the ecosystem, you can visit our blogpost.

The role of the ecosystem

We at tapio have a neutral position in the ecosystem. This makes us a trustee for the parties involved. It is important that all parties know that their data is protected and that we act responsibility. This increases the participation and acceptance of customers and manufacturers. For us, it is important that valuable benefits are created in the ecosystem for all stakeholders. Only on this path, the digital ecosystem will grow. Consequently, joint collaboration as well as solution-oriented and intelligent applications can be created for everyone.