The Lean Ecosystem Canvas
An Adaptive Partner Ecosystem on One Page
Deconstruct
Your Supply Chain
on 1-Page
Discovery and setup of a Supply Chain take too long, are too static and often not following a win-win mindset.
When you're going really fast and under conditions of extreme uncertainty, you need dynamic models, not static plans.
The Lean Ecosystem Canvas replaces long and boring contract negotiations with each strategic partner with a 1-page, that takes 20 minutes to create and gets read.
The Lean Ecosystem Canvas by Mirko Kleiner is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Inspired by the RenDanHeYi, the work of Haier, the Ecosystem Canvas of Boundaryless. This new adapted version was designed for purposes such as pushing the boundaries of traditional supply chain management.
eRevo, a game-changing ScaleUp revolutionizing energy storage, built their entire Partner Ecosystem in just 1 day!
Curious to know how? Discover their and other Ecosystem Case Studies
Typical Results reported by Organizations using the Canvas
20min
Definition of Strategic joint Outcomes, IP’s, cost-/profit sharing
60min
100%
From Idea to a multi-Partner mutual Agreement
Overview, better Alignment, Risks & Dependency Mitigation
100%
Collaborative, early & continously Involvement
The Basics
The Lean Ecosystem Canvas is a mutual Agreement for all parties in the Adaptive Partner Ecosystem:
The starting point is the expected joint outcome/WHY, . to be truly customer centric we need to understand the customer scenario/WHAT, before we start thinking about capabilities/HOW. Filling in
The Lean Ecosystem Canvas is created and updated collaboratively with all key customer/stakeholders/partners driven by the cross-company team/WHO.
Learn more about each section and download The Lean Ecosystem Canvas - Cheat Sheet in your language:
HOW
WHY
WHY NOT
Joint Focus
WHO
WHAT
The Cheat sheet gives you the needed guidance what
questions to answer per section.
Please note: ESG and other important topics are included from the start.
The Premium Community Membership grants access to advanced Contents such as the official Book, Downloads and Community Events. Everytime you take one of our Certification Courses the Premium Membership is prolonged by another year.
Membership Content
To get access to this membership contents we need your contact details. Therefor register for a Basic Community Membership while checkout or sign up for our Premium Membership and get access to all our contents.
The Basic Membership is FREE of charge.
“The Lean Ecosystem Canvas is an Agile Contract”
Is 1 Page really enough for
e.g.
a $ 1 bn Business Case?
Obviously not, we usually end up having a lot of attachments, where we e.g. define the Commercial Model, the Collaboration Model. Furthermore we’d “Slice the Dice”, break down the $1 bn Sourcing Case in smaller Chuncks and focus to the most promising Outcomes / Hypothesis first. In other words The Lean Ecosystem Canvas could also be scaled to different levels of a huge case.
Attention: All of the attachments are living documents or hypothesis!*
The Canvas a
Risk Mitigation Framework
The Lean Ecosystem Canvas not only revolutionizes supply chain management practices but also functions as a robust risk mitigation framework. By offering a visual and structured approach, the canvas enables organizations to proactively identify, assess, and mitigate risks inherent in the collaboration with their strategic partners. Its systematic layout empowers strategic partnerships to collaboratively address potential disruptions, fostering a culture of risk awareness and resilience while ensuring smoother and more successful procurement outcomes.
The canvas mitigates 4 key areas of risk:
Business or Partner Risk - If the WHY and WHAT sections of the canvas do not match the proposed Capabilities (HOW) of the ecosystem partner, this indicates that we don’t really have a valid solution and this is not the right vendor/partner/s.
Condition Risk - A strong fit on cultural, technical, legal and non-functional conditions would indicate a strong potential vendor/partner fit, whereas, weak alignment on these areas would suggest a poor partner alignment.
People Risk - The LAP process enables us to get to know the people of each company we will be working with through its participatory nature. The canvas provides a place to capture those experiences and in LAP this is part of the evaluation criteria. If we don't like the people we might be working with, both in delivery and leadership, then we may be engaging with the wrong vendor/partner.
Future Risk - If the partner is a perfect fit now, but shows no potential for our future ambitions, then perhaps this is not the best vendor/partner.
In LAP, the cross-company team monitors all these risks iteratively. At least every time it's updated. Sometimes this is during the shortlisting process, sometimes it is during the contact with the potential ecosystem partners, and sometimes it happens that we have to exclude a candidate even during the workshop in the big room.
The canvas helps to keep track of these risks.
The following is a summary of currently known and applied uses for The Lean Ecosystem Canvas, both in public and private sector:
Sourcing - The Canvas optimizes the entire supplier selection process from idea to contract for complex business cases that need more than 2+ suppliers
Account Management Tool for Supply Chain Management - After sourcing the Canvas has been seamlessly used as an account management tool - both on the buyer and supplier side - to monitor and plan the partnerships more effectively in an iterative way on a single page.
Assessment of an existing supply chain - Although most supply chain management organizations have supplier management tools in place, they often lose sight of the big picture. The Canvas offers the ability to quickly (\<1 hour) assess an existing supply chain with all the benefits of leveraging diversity by involving all relevant people.
Modeling a Supply Chain’s Should State - Sometimes an existing supply chain develops in the wrong direction. The Canvas can help to model the "should state" of the supply chain collaboratively, with all the internal and external people in less than an hour.
Business development - Together with existing tools such as the Business Model Canvas, lean startup, etc. extends the Lean Ecosystem Canvas the toolbox for corporate- or standalone startups
1 Page Contract - As we've learnt, the canvas covers all the information needed for a contractual framework. Startups or more disruptive companies started to use the canvas as an Agile contract, skipping the translation into further legal documents.
However you use the Canvas, remember that it's never about the tool, it's always about the conversations, communications and alignment that we create with it!
Application Areas of the Canvas
The Lean Procurement Canvas is a living document that is collaboratively updated by the cross-company team throughout the product lifecycle. It is initiated by the Initiator / Orchestrator of a business case. The initiator is just another contributor to the vision / mission of the Adaptive Partner Ecosystem.
Start with the Canvas in your favorite online Whiteboard Tool
The Lean Ecosystem Canvas has become an official Template in the 2 most popular online whiteboard tools miro & mural. Start with the template today, it’s FREE!
