When business leaders talk about ecosystems, they often conjure up images of sprawling supply chains, digital platforms or interconnected industries. But in the rush to draw parallels, the term has become little more than corporate jargon – another way of describing complex business networks without recognizing the underlying systems that determine their success or failure. True ecosystem thinking, however, requires a deeper reflection. If we want to understand how networks survive, adapt and ultimately thrive, we need to look at ecosystems as nature intended: as resilient, interdependent and dynamic systems. However, to learn from nature, we must go beyond surface-level analogies and recognize both the parallels and the limits of comparison.
Natural ecosystems evolve organically over millennia. By contrast, business ecosystems are shaped by deliberate strategies, market forces, and, more often than not, a desire to control interconnections. While this difference is significant, the underlying principles remain instructive: systems that thrive over time balance competition with collaboration, optimize for resilience rather than short-term efficiency, and adapt to change without undermining the very networks they depend upon. The comparison, then, is not about mirroring nature but about understanding the wisdom inherent in its processes. Nature does not operate for quarterly returns; its systems endure because they prioritize longevity and collective health.
In natural ecosystems, interdependence is not an abstract ideal—it is the defining rule of survival. A forest, for example, does not thrive because its individual trees compete for sunlight or nutrients in isolation. It flourishes because the organisms within it—plants, animals, fungi, and microbes—have evolved sophisticated relationships that ensure collective resilience. Trees share nutrients through mycorrhizal networks, often called the “wood wide web.” Decomposers recycle what others discard, creating regenerative loops where nothing is wasted. Even competition, when it exists, functions to strengthen the system rather than destroy it. Predators balance prey populations; plants compete for light yet contribute to soil health. Nature understands what many businesses forget: competition cannot be destructive if the system as a whole is to endure.
Here, businesses would do well to reconsider their approach to competition. The prevailing logic—where rivals must be outperformed, resources hoarded, and short-term dominance achieved—echoes the monocultures that collapse under pressure in nature. In ecosystems, unchecked competition leads to imbalance and degradation. When businesses over-exploit natural resources, or when industries engage in destructive price wars, the system itself begins to erode. What, then, is the alternative? Ecosystem thinking offers a path toward cooperative competition, where organizations recognize their interdependence and work to maintain the health of the broader system.
However, this is where a critical nuance arises: unlike nature’s organic processes, business systems are not bound by inherent checks and balances. The absence of external regulators often allows competition to spiral into destabilization. Businesses may recognize interconnectedness, but they often interpret it as something to exploit or control. Supply chains are treated as pipelines to optimize, ecosystems as resources to extract, and networks as power dynamics to dominate. The system’s health is secondary to short-term gains, resulting in fragile markets that crumble under strain.
Collaborating with rivals on shared challenges—such as decarbonizing supply chains or investing in sustainable infrastructure—can create value that no single player could achieve alone. Competitors, much like species in nature, can push one another to adapt, evolve, and innovate, strengthening the entire system as they do so.
This is not theoretical. In industries from renewable energy to technological platforms, leaders are already recognizing that collaboration is a prerequisite for resilience. Competitors in wind and solar sectors often share infrastructure or research, driving the sector forward. Platforms like Microsoft or Apple, while fiercely competitive, thrive because they enable ecosystems of developers, users, and innovators to interact and create mutual value. True resilience lies not in domination but in fostering relationships that allow the system to adapt to change. The lessons of nature—that systems thrive through mutual reinforcement—are often left unlearned.
The same principles apply when we turn to technology itself—particularly artificial intelligence. AI is rapidly becoming the connective tissue of modern business ecosystems, offering the ability to analyze vast interdependencies, identify hidden patterns, and optimize processes. In this sense, AI mirrors the role of mycorrhizal networks in nature, enabling organisms (or organizations) to sense, adapt, and respond to changes in their environments. Used well, AI can help businesses navigate the complexity of their ecosystems, from mapping supply chain risks to optimizing resource flows. It can support circular economy principles, for instance, by tracking materials across their lifecycle and identifying opportunities to regenerate rather than extract.
Yet AI, much like competition, is a double-edged sword. Its potential to enhance systems thinking depends entirely on the intentions behind its deployment. Just as monocultures optimize for short-term efficiency at the cost of long-term resilience, AI systems driven solely by profit or short-term metrics risk destabilizing the broader system. Consider the unchecked optimization of logistics, where efficiency gains might lower costs but exacerbate carbon emissions, labor exploitation, or resource depletion. Similarly, opaque algorithms can create unintended feedback loops—displacing workers, concentrating power, or reinforcing inequities across the system.
Ecosystem thinking demands that we ask harder questions about AI’s role: Is it strengthening the resilience of the system, or merely optimizing one part at the cost of others? Is it being used to identify regenerative opportunities—such as better resource cycling or collaborative innovation—or is it accelerating extractive practices? AI, like any tool, does not dictate its purpose. It is up to leaders to align its use with principles of interdependence, adaptation, and regeneration.
To truly embrace ecosystem thinking, businesses must let go of outdated, mechanistic models of success. Linear strategies, where competition is destructive and technology is extractive, are relics of an industrial age that no longer fits the realities of an interconnected world. Yet this shift is easier said than done. Many business leaders, though fully aware of the interconnected nature of modern systems, often approach these connections with the mindset of control and dominance rather than collaboration and stewardship.
This raises a deeper question: Why do leaders—who are surrounded by evidence of global interdependencies—continue to interpret interconnectedness through a purely competitive lens? The answer lies, at least in part, in a worldview shaped by the industrial and neoliberal eras, where markets were treated as battlegrounds and progress was synonymous with control. Businesses learned to see their connections not as relationships to nurture but as levers to manipulate for maximum advantage. Supply chains became optimized pipelines, ecosystems were reframed as resources to exploit, and networks of relationships were reduced to power dynamics.
The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fragility of systems when control becomes an end in itself. Attempting to dominate an interconnected system—whether through monopolistic competition, resource extraction, or algorithmic control—may produce short-term gains, but it often comes at the expense of resilience. Just as over-predation can decimate an ecosystem or monocultures can collapse under stress, a business that tightens its grip on its networks risks destabilizing them. Supply chains grow brittle, markets lose their dynamism, and businesses find themselves vulnerable to the very shocks they sought to control.
This desire for control is amplified by the tools businesses now have at their disposal, particularly technology. AI and other digital systems provide unprecedented visibility and power, allowing leaders to map, measure, and manipulate interconnections. While these tools hold incredible potential for enabling ecosystem thinking, they are too often wielded to centralize power rather than distribute value. The question, then, is not whether leaders understand interconnectedness—it is whether they are willing to reimagine their role within it.
In natural ecosystems, interconnectedness does not imply control. It implies participation. A tree does not “control” the fungi that connect it to others; it contributes to and benefits from a system that is beyond any single organism’s command. The resilience of ecosystems emerges precisely because no one part dominates the whole. For businesses to truly thrive in an interconnected world, they must replace the impulse to dominate with a commitment to balance. This means seeing competitors not only as rivals but also as collaborators in maintaining system health. It means using technology not to extract value from networks but to enable mutual growth. It means asking, as nature does: What can I contribute to the system that sustains me?
Such a shift requires more than new strategies—it demands a new mindset. Leaders must recognize that their success depends not on their ability to control interconnections but on their willingness to nurture them. This is a difficult transition for those accustomed to linear, mechanistic thinking. Yet it is the only path to resilience in a world where systems are too complex, too dynamic, and too interdependent to be controlled.
Ecosystems remind us that survival is not about isolated strength but about the relationships that define us. Resilience emerges from diversity, collaboration, and balance. Businesses that fail to recognize this—those that undermine their ecosystems in pursuit of short-term gains—will find themselves as brittle as the systems they neglect.
Nature has been refining its systems for billions of years. It has endured cataclysms and reinvented itself through cooperation, regeneration, and evolution. For businesses navigating the disruptions of the 21st century—climate breakdown, technological transformation, resource scarcity—there is no better model. AI may help us see these interconnections more clearly, and competition may continue to drive us to adapt. But as nature shows us, neither can exist without a commitment to the health of the whole. Ecosystem thinking is not a metaphor; it is a blueprint for resilience, one that businesses would be wise to embrace.
The question, as always, is whether we are willing to learn.
Jef Teugels is an experienced and passionate Planet and People First Solutions Catalyst committed to developing business strategies which combine ethical responsibility with environmental stewardship with profitability. As part of his doctoral research at the University of Cumbria, Jef explores sustainable business practices and ethical leadership. Additionally, as a faculty member at Krakow School of Business, he lectures on both Executive and International MBA programs fostering new generations of ethical business leaders.