Introduction

Nowadays it is rare that a value proposition is developed by one organization only. Instead, towards creating more integrated and seamless experiences for users, often the different products/services from different organizations become integrated. Innovating ourselves thus assumes that we at least consider, but sometimes also attempt to influence external parties in their innovation process to act in ways that benefit us. In this lecture, we speak about ways by which you as an innovator can understand which other parties you need to involve to make your innovation more successful. We provide several examples of companies that have successfully understood the value of involving external organizations to their innovation process. Furthermore, we introduce a tool called ’Ecosystem Pie Model’ (EPM) that helps you map, design and analyze innovation settings where more than one organization is involved in creating a value proposition.