The service, the platform, the ecosystem, the business

Most leaders build for the problem in front of them. 

They design a solution that solves the immediate need, meets the brief, delivers the outcome that was requested. The solution works. The problem is solved. The work is done. 

This is not wrong. It is incomplete.

The leader who thinks big asks a different question before the design begins. Not just what does this need to do now, but what could this become if it were designed to grow? Not just how do we solve this problem, but how do we build the foundation that makes the next problem easier, the one after that easier still, and the one after that unnecessary?

The difference between a service and a platform is not complexity. It is intention. A service solves a problem. A platform solves a problem in a way that others can build on. The extra design effort required to turn a service into a platform is small relative to the total work. The difference in what can be built on top of it is enormous.

The difference between a platform and an ecosystem is connection. A platform is a foundation. An ecosystem is a network of services connected on that foundation, each one making the others stronger, each one creating value that none of them could create alone. The customer who uses one service in the ecosystem encounters the others naturally. The data built in one service compounds into the next. The relationship established in one context carries into every other.

The difference between an ecosystem and a business is structure. An ecosystem creates value through connection. A business captures that value through organisation. When the ecosystem matures, the services within it have grown into something more than connected solutions. They have become business units, each with its own customers, its own revenue and its own growth potential. Each sub-business uses the shared platform as its foundation. Each draws on the services, products and in some cases the physical infrastructure of the others. The overlap is not inefficiency. It is the source of the advantage. A sub-business that shares a capability with its siblings does not need to build one. A sub-business that draws on the data generated across the ecosystem arrives at decisions its standalone competitors cannot make. The business with sub-businesses does not just connect value. It structures it, scales it and compounds it across every unit simultaneously.

Most businesses never reach this stage because they never designed for it. They built services that solved problems. Each service was designed independently, for its own purpose, without the architecture that would have allowed them to connect, compound and eventually become a structured portfolio of interdependent businesses.

Think big from the start. Not because the business with sub-businesses is the immediate goal. Because the design decisions made at the service level determine whether the platform is ever possible, the decisions made at the platform level determine whether the ecosystem is ever possible, and the decisions made at the ecosystem level determine whether the business is ever possible. By the time the next level is visible, the foundation is already built or it is not.

Key Takeaway: The progression from service to platform to ecosystem to business is a framework for design intent, not a roadmap. The decisions made at each level determine whether the next level is possible. Think big before the foundation is poured — because by the time the opportunity is visible, the window for designing toward it may already have closed.

A service solves a problem. A platform enables others to build on it. An ecosystem connects the solutions. A business structures the value and compounds it.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 4: Think Big · Section: The service, the platform, the ecosystem, the business

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com

Design for what it could become

The most expensive design decisions are the ones that were not made deliberately.

Every service, every process, every system is built on assumptions about its future scope. Most of those assumptions are never made explicit. The designer solves the immediate problem and leaves the future scope undefined. The future scope then gets defined by whoever inherits the system, under whatever pressure exists at that moment, without the original design intent to guide the decisions.

The result is a system that works for its original purpose and resists every attempt to extend it. Adding a new service requires workarounds. Connecting to a new partner requires custom integrations. Scaling to a new market requires rework that the original design did not anticipate. Building a business unit on top of the service requires rebuilding the foundation because it was never designed to carry that weight. Every expansion costs more than it should because the foundation was not designed to be expanded.

The alternative is not to over-engineer the original solution. It is to make the scope assumptions explicit before the design begins. What is this solving today? What should it be capable of supporting in two years? What would break if the volume doubled? What would need to change if a new market was added? What would need to exist if this service became the foundation for a platform, or if that platform became the foundation for a business? These questions do not require answers at the design stage. They require consideration. The design that has considered them will be different from the design that has not, in ways that are invisible at launch and enormously consequential at scale.

Designing for what something could become is not the same as building what it might need. It is leaving the doors open rather than closing them. Choosing the architecture that accommodates growth rather than the architecture that is cheaper today and expensive tomorrow. Making the decisions that are easy now and difficult later, while there is still time to make them well.

Key Takeaway: Designing for what something could become means making the scope assumptions explicit before the design begins. The doors left open at the design stage cost very little. The doors closed at the design stage cost enormously to reopen — and some cannot be reopened at all without rebuilding the foundation entirely.

The most expensive design decisions are the ones that were not made deliberately.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 4: Think Big · Section: Design for what it could become

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com

The platform mindset

A platform is not a product. It is a foundation.

The distinction matters because it changes everything about how the work is designed, governed and grown. A product is designed to deliver a specific outcome. A platform is designed to enable multiple outcomes, some of which are not yet defined at the time the platform is built.

The leader who builds a product asks: what does this need to do? The leader who builds a platform asks: what does this need to support? The first question leads to a solution optimised for the current use case. The second leads to a foundation optimised for use cases that do not yet exist, including the use cases that will emerge when the platform becomes the foundation for an ecosystem, and when that ecosystem becomes the foundation for a business with sub-businesses.

The platform mindset requires a specific kind of discipline that does not come naturally to organisations under delivery pressure. The temptation is always to solve the immediate problem in the most direct way available. The platform approach requires solving the immediate problem in the way that builds the most useful foundation, even when the direct approach would be faster.

This discipline pays back at every subsequent build. The second service built on the platform is faster and cheaper than the first because the foundation already exists. The third is faster and cheaper than the second. When the platform supports an ecosystem, each new service added benefits from everything built before it. When the ecosystem evolves into a business, each sub-business inherits the platform, the integrations, the partner relationships and the data that the platform accumulated. The compounding return on platform investment increases with every service, every partner and every sub-business added. The organisation that builds services independently pays full cost every time. The organisation that builds on a platform pays decreasing marginal cost with every addition.

The platform mindset also changes how partnerships and integrations are approached. A service connects to partners through custom integrations, each one built for a specific relationship. A platform connects to partners through defined interfaces that any partner can use, and that any sub-business in the eventual portfolio can also use. The first partner integration is the hardest. Every subsequent integration is easier because the interface already exists. The ecosystem of partners that forms around a well-designed platform becomes a structural advantage for every business built on top of it.

Key Takeaway: The platform mindset asks what a solution needs to support, not just what it needs to do. The investment in platform thinking compounds with every service, partner and sub-business added. The organisation that builds on a platform accumulates capability. The organisation that builds services independently accumulates cost.

A product is designed to deliver a specific outcome. A platform is designed to enable outcomes that do not yet exist.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 4: Think Big · Section: The platform mindset

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com

The ecosystem advantage

An ecosystem is what happens when a platform reaches its full potential.

Individual services compete on the quality of what they deliver. Platforms compete on the quality of what they enable. Ecosystems compete on the quality of the network they create. Each level of this progression is harder to replicate than the last.

A competitor can copy a service. It takes time but it is possible. The features are visible. The pricing is visible. The delivery model is visible. A sufficiently resourced competitor can build a comparable service.

A competitor can copy a platform with more difficulty. The architecture is less visible. The integrations take time to rebuild. The partner relationships take time to establish. But it is still possible for a well-resourced competitor to build a comparable platform over a sufficient timeline.

A competitor cannot easily copy an ecosystem. The value of an ecosystem is not in any individual service or in the platform that connects them. It is in the network effects. The customer who uses multiple services in the ecosystem generates data and relationships that improve every service they use. The partner who integrates with the ecosystem reaches every customer in it. The service added to the ecosystem is immediately more valuable than the same service would be in isolation because it is connected to everything else.

The ecosystem also creates the conditions for the business with sub-businesses to emerge. As each service within the ecosystem grows, it develops its own customer relationships, its own revenue streams and its own operational identity. The ecosystem that was designed as a connected whole begins to reveal within it a portfolio of businesses that share a foundation but could each stand independently. The transition from ecosystem to business is not a restructure. It is a recognition of what the ecosystem has already become.

Key Takeaway: Ecosystems are the hardest competitive position to replicate because their value lies in network effects, not in any individual component. The ecosystem also creates the conditions for the next level, the business with sub-businesses, by growing each service into something with its own value while keeping it connected to the shared foundation.

A service can be copied. A platform can be replicated with effort. An ecosystem can only be built from the start.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 4: Think Big · Section: The ecosystem advantage

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com

The business with sub-businesses

The ecosystem is not the final stage. It is the stage that makes the final stage possible.

When an ecosystem matures, when the services are connected, when the platform is proven, when the network effects are real and compounding, something becomes visible that was not visible at the start. Each service in the ecosystem has grown into something with its own value, its own customer base, its own revenue potential and its own growth trajectory. The ecosystem that was built as a connected whole now contains within it a collection of businesses that could each stand independently.

This is the fourth level. The business with sub-businesses.

At this level the parent organisation is no longer a single operation with supporting services. It is a holding structure for a portfolio of interconnected business units, each with its own P&L, its own leadership and its own strategic direction, all operating on the shared foundation and all contributing to the parent.

The overlap between sub-businesses is not a problem to be managed. It is the source of the advantage. Sub-businesses share services across the portfolio. A logistics capability built for one sub-business serves all of them. A customer relationship established in one sub-business opens doors in every other. A hardware product developed for one use case finds applications across multiple sub-businesses that would each have needed to develop it independently. The shared foundation means that each sub-business starts with capabilities it did not have to build, supported by relationships it did not have to earn and drawing on data it did not have to generate alone.

Each sub-business can be invested in at the pace its growth justifies, independent of the pace of the others. A sub-business growing faster than the rest can receive investment without slowing the others. A sub-business that has reached maturity can fund the growth of the ones that are earlier in their trajectory. A sub-business that has developed a unique capability the parent needs can provide it as a shared service to the whole portfolio. The portfolio compounds across every unit simultaneously, in ways that a collection of independent businesses operating without a shared foundation never could.

Key Takeaway: The business with sub-businesses captures the ecosystem's value in structure. The overlap between sub-businesses is the source of the advantage, not a complexity to be reduced. Each sub-business benefits from the shared foundation, the shared capabilities and the shared relationships of the portfolio while retaining the independence to grow at its own pace and in its own direction.

The ecosystem creates the value. The business with sub-businesses structures it, scales it and compounds it.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 4: Think Big · Section: The business with sub-businesses

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com

A real example

In a large operational environment, a leader was given responsibility for a single service area. The brief was straightforward. Run the service. Meet the targets. Manage the team.

The leader looked at the brief and saw something the brief did not describe. The service was not standalone. It was connected to other services, other departments, other functions across the organisation. The data generated by the service was relevant to teams who were not using it. The processes designed for the service could support adjacent functions if they were extended slightly. The relationships built with external partners through the service could be leveraged across the organisation if there were a common interface.

Nobody had designed for any of this. Each service had been built independently, for its own purpose, without the architecture that would have allowed them to connect. The potential was visible. The foundation to realise it did not exist.

The leader began building the foundation. Not as a separate project. Within the work of running the service. Every process was designed to be extensible. Every partner relationship was structured to support broader use. Every data structure was built to be accessible across functions. The service continued to meet its targets. The foundation grew underneath it.

Over time other functions began connecting to the foundation. Not because they were asked to. Because the foundation made their work easier. The data they needed was available. The partner relationships they required were already established. The processes they were trying to build already existed in a form they could extend.

What began as a single service became a platform. What became a platform began attracting adjacent services. The adjacent services began sharing capabilities, customer relationships and infrastructure. The overlap between them was not managed as a problem. It was designed as an advantage. Each service that connected to the foundation became more capable than it had been in isolation. Each new connection made the foundation more valuable to every service already on it.

The ecosystem did not form by announcement. It formed because the foundation had been designed to support it, quietly, over time, while the service continued to run.

The leader did not have a larger team or a larger budget than anyone else. They had a longer view.

The ecosystem does not announce itself. It forms around a foundation that was designed to support it.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 4: Think Big · A real example

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com

Chapter Outcome

The service you are building today is the foundation of the platform you will build tomorrow. The platform you build tomorrow is the foundation of the ecosystem that follows. The ecosystem is the foundation of the business with sub-businesses that compounds everything built before it.

Design with that in mind from the start. Not because the business with sub-businesses is the immediate goal. Because the design decisions made at the service level determine whether the platform is ever possible, the decisions made at the platform level determine whether the ecosystem is ever possible, and the decisions made at the ecosystem level determine whether the business is ever possible.

Make the scope assumptions explicit before the design begins. Leave the doors open that will cost nothing to leave open now and enormously to reopen later. Design the overlap between services as an advantage rather than a complexity. Let sub-businesses share capabilities, relationships and infrastructure rather than building everything independently.

Use the full potential of what you are building. Not just the potential it has today but the potential it could have if it were designed to grow, to connect, to become the natural home for everything that follows, and eventually to become the foundation of a portfolio of businesses that compound each other's value.

The leader who builds a service builds something useful. The leader who builds a platform builds something leverageable. The leader who builds an ecosystem builds something that compounds. The leader who builds a business with sub-businesses builds something that outlasts every individual service, platform and ecosystem within it.

Think big. From the start. While the foundation is still being poured.

The service solves the problem. The platform enables the next one. The ecosystem makes the platform the only logical place to be. The business makes the ecosystem the only logical foundation to build on.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 4: The Future · Philosophy 4: Think Big · Chapter Outcome

MarvinPro | December 2025

marvinpro.com