YOUR MOVE
- Dirk Bischof
- Feb 24
- 6 min read
The Specific Actions That Build Connected Ecosystems (And Why Waiting for Permission Is Costing You)
Many stakeholder in enterprise ecosystems is waiting for someone else to move first.
Councils wait for government policy. Corporates wait for clear ROI frameworks, annual budget approvals. Funders wait for proven models. Programme operators, whether running charity incubators, corporate accelerators, or university programmes, wait for multi-year commitments.
Meanwhile, founders navigate the fragmentation themselves.
This is our 3rd article exploring ecosystem fragmentation and the costs for stakeholders. you can explore article #1 (here) and article #2 (here) After advising dozens of ecosystem builders and venture support providers and supporting 10,000+ founders Hatch Enterprise UK , I can tell you with certainty: the actor best positioned to catalyse change isn't who you think it is.
And the actions required are simpler, and more uncomfortable, than anyone wants to admit.
For local authorities: stop operating, start convening
Your comparative advantage isn't running programmes directly.
It's convening stakeholders who won't convene themselves and allocating budget for coordination capacity that no single organisation can fund from their own resources.
Here's your 12-month playbook:
Months 1-2: Commission an ecosystem mapping exercise. Not a report. A living database of every organisation providing enterprise support in your area (charity programmes, corporate accelerators, university incubators, VC initiatives), what they offer, who they serve, how they measure success.
Cost: £15k-£25k. Less than a single junior staff member.
Month 3: Convene a stakeholder meeting with transparent agenda: "We're going to build coordinated infrastructure. Here's the data on fragmentation costs. Here's what coordination could achieve. Who's in?"
Months 4-6: Allocate £50k-£100k annually for neutral backbone coordination. This isn't a programme budget. It's the person who holds the referral system together, facilitates quarterly meetings, maintains shared measurement.
Based on our analysis, this role pays for itself within 18 months through reduced duplication.
Months 7-12: Establish quarterly stakeholder meetings with public progress tracking. Shared dashboard showing ecosystem-level outcomes. Transparent reporting on what's working, what's not.
The convening power matters more than the budget.
Most local authorities underestimate this. They think their role is funding programmes to see impact delivered locally. Whilst this is true and valuable, your role at convening and connecting local providers can be a powerful add-on.
For corporates: shift from participation to partnership
You're spending millions on ESG reporting whilst ecosystems struggle for £100k multi-year commitments.
The maths doesn't maths.
One corporate partner told me: "Skilled Volunteering is not only a way for our colleagues to use their experience and skills to benefit others, but it is also a way to learn about the barriers and challenges facing different communities." That's still donation thinking.
Partnership thinking looks different:
Replace this: Running a standalone corporate accelerator disconnected from the ecosystem. With this: Integrating your accelerator into coordinated pathways that connect to charity programmes, university incubators, and investment opportunities
Replace this: Annual £10k CSR grant to three organisations. With this: £100k three-year commitment to ecosystem coordination capacity
Replace this: One-off volunteer mentoring days. With this: 6-12 month staff secondments where your people work inside programmes, transferring skills whilst building deep understanding
Replace this: Measuring volunteer hours. With this: Measuring businesses surviving, jobs created, wealth retained locally
Replace this: Supporting programmes you like. With this: Opening procurement pipelines that give founders actual customers
Here's what this requires from your side:
Someone senior enough to commit resources beyond single budget cycles. Willingness to measure impact over 3-5 years, not quarterly. Genuine interest in ecosystem outcomes, not just brand association.
Most corporates aren't ready for this. They want the ESG story without the
infrastructure investment.
But the corporates that make this shift discover something interesting:
strategic ecosystem partnership delivers better talent pipeline,
stronger community relationships, and
more credible ESG narrative than surface-level engagement
For philanthropic funders: fund the boring but essential
You fund innovation. You back new approaches. You test what public money can't.
That's valuable. It's also insufficient.
Because whilst you're funding the tenth slightly-different accelerator model, nobody's funding:
The shared CRM system that would stop founders repeating their story to six organisations
The coordination role that would connect programmes into pathways
The measurement framework that would make ecosystem-level impact visible
The referral platform that would reduce navigation burden
These infrastructure investments aren't innovative. They're force multipliers.
They make every programme you fund more effective, whether it's a charity incubator, corporate accelerator, or university programme. But they rarely get funded because they're not sexy, not directly founder-facing, and don't fit neat innovation theories of change.
Here's your shift:
Reserve 20-30% of enterprise support portfolio for infrastructure, not programmes.
Fund three-year commitments to:
Backbone organisations holding ecosystem coordination
Shared measurement systems across multiple programmes
Referral and triage platforms
Coordination staff capacity
Measure success differently. Not "new programme launched" but "reduced founder navigation time" and "increased inter-organisational referrals" and "improved ecosystem-level survival rates."
One funder made this shift and discovered something surprising: infrastructure funding attracted corporate co-investment in ways programme funding never did. Because corporates understand infrastructure. They just weren't sure who should pay for it.
For programme operators: initiate coordination even if it's not funded
This is the most uncomfortable advice because you're already operating on survival mode.
Whether you're running a charity programme managing annual funding cycles, a corporate accelerator navigating quarterly business priorities, or a university incubator following academic calendars, you're maxed out. Coordinating with peer organisations feels like luxury you can't afford.
But here's what I've learned watching hundreds of programmes over 12 years:
The organisations that break out of survival mode are the ones that initiate coordination before it's funded. They start by agreeing to common metrics with 2-3 peer organisations. Just metrics. No contracts, no formal partnership, just "we're going to measure the same things so we can talk about collective impact."
They build referral relationships based on trust rather than contracts. "When a founder completes our programme and needs X, we send them to you. When they need Y, you send them to us."
They share what works and what doesn't. Openly. In front of funders.
This feels risky. You're worried about losing competitive advantage in a crowded market.
But here's what actually happens:
Funders respond to collective asks more readily than individual requests. Coordinated ecosystems attract larger investment because reduced fragmentation reduces risk. Shared infrastructure makes everyone more effective, which strengthens everyone's funding case.
One programme leader told us: "We're now starting to move beyond conversation to ambition, which is exciting."
That shift happens when you stop waiting for permission and start building the coordination you wish existed.
The leadership that's actually required
None of these actions require perfect conditions.
They require clarity about what coordination actually means and willingness to build it before it's fully funded.
They require admitting we need each other, which is harder than it sounds when organisations compete for scarce resources.
They require measuring different things. Not just "our programme impact" but "ecosystem-level outcomes." Not just "founders served" but "founder navigation time reduced."
Most importantly, they require someone to move first without waiting for everyone to agree.
The technical knowledge exists. The business case is clear. The tools are available.
What's required is leadership: councils willing to convene even when it's politically risky, corporates willing to invest strategically even when ROI timelines are longer, funders willing to back infrastructure even when it's not innovative, programme operators willing to coordinate even when it creates short-term vulnerability.
The choice point
Local enterprise ecosystems face a decision:
Continue the current trajectory. Well-intentioned programmes operating independently, achieving measurable but fragmented impact (with research showing 60% of founders consider accelerator participation vital to success, Nesta 2019), requiring founders to navigate complexity themselves, operating at an estimated 40-50% of potential effectiveness.
Or build deliberately connected ecosystems where coordination is funded as infrastructure, where shared systems reduce organisational burden and improve founder outcomes, where multi-year commitments allow capacity building, where measurement frameworks make collective impact visible.
Based on our analysis comparing fragmented versus coordinated ecosystem performance, coordinated ecosystems could produce:
40% increase in business survival rates
60% growth in investment into local businesses
50% reduction in coordination costs across organisations
25% increase in businesses started by underrepresented founders
The patchwork exists. We've all helped build it. Charities, corporates, universities, VCs, all doing good work in isolation.
The question is whether we're ready to weave it into something more, over time.
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