Biologists say ecosystem to describe a community of organisms interacting in their environment.  We can analogize that definition to business as well.  Thus, in a business ecosystem, the relationships between things matter.  In fact, they matter a lot.  Everything touches everything else.  And so the way that humans interact has a big effect on the system.  For instance, two people sitting in a coffee shop today might be starting the world’s next most important company, or they might not.  It depends largely on how they interact.  Do they like each other?  Do inspire each other?  Do they trust each other enough to take a chance together?  The world might turn on those answers.

However, over the last couple of years, I’ve seen ecosystem used interchangeably with terms like “cluster” or “network” or “organization.”  It feels a bit like Buzzword Bingo as if folks are just swapping words out because the old ones feel tired, like clothing that’s been worn too many times.  But this is terrible because they are missing the key difference.  The terms “cluster” or “network” or “organization” are rather static.  They describe the mere presence of assets in a system, like blocks on a wall chart.