For centuries people believed the Earth sat at the centre of the universe, with the Sun, planets and stars circling it. In 1543 Copernicus made progress by putting the Sun at the centre instead. Ultimately resulting in a massive (and controversial) point of view shift.
Most organisations still hold an overly “geocentric” type view of themselves. Strategy and business architecture is drawn with the organisation in the middle and everything else orbiting it: customers, suppliers, regulators, society and, somewhere on the outer ring, “the environment”, usually filed as an externality. As individuals we do the same.
Ecosystem Architecture starts with a similar adjustment. Things do not revolve around us. We take part in much larger ecosystems, and we depend on them.
Once you see that, different questions become obvious: What do we rely on that we do not control? What are we pushing onto systems we cannot do without? What natural capital are we dependant on yet undervaluing?
What might a shifted perspective look like?
Many will still think of their own organisation as being at the centre. We’ve chosen to draw it at the top of a stack. Your organisation rests on a business ecosystem, which rests on an economy, which rests on society, which rests on the biosphere.
Note that this is tech focussed. You could use this approach to consider broader business impacts across these layers, but this just uses mainly digital technology to illustrate the concept (and as this tends to be the focus of our advisory).
Pick a viewpoint to see suggestions and examples of what the stack might means for your sector.
Outside-in: what each layer provides to you, and the risks if it falters (financial materiality).
Every organisation runs on digital systems, and every digital system has a physical footprint somewhere beneath it.
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Arguably Most material? BiosphereThe foundation EnergyWaterMineralsClimate Electricity for devices, networks and data centres; water for cooling and chip making; minerals in every piece of hardware.
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SocietyThe social foundation StaffCustomersCommunitiesTrust Skilled people, healthy communities and enough public trust to keep operating.
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Economy and sectorsMarkets and infrastructure Energy gridSupply chainsFinanceRegulation Stable energy, working supply chains, capital and predictable regulation.
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Arguably Most material? Business ecosystemInfluence, not control CustomersSuppliersCloud and SaaSAI models Cloud platforms, SaaS, AI model providers and open source that you do not control.
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Your organisationYou are here TeamsProcessesSystemsDataDecisions Feedback from every layer below, if you have built the loops to hear it.
Each layer sits wholly on the one beneath it, so nothing above can be bigger than its foundation. Resources and constraints rise from the bottom; impacts settle back down onto it. Select a layer for detail.
Resources and constraints rise from the bottom. Impacts settle back down onto it. Seen this way, an “externality” is simply a load you are placing on a layer you also depend on.
Four positions
1. Every system has a footprint somewhere real. Every product, process and digital service depends on energy, materials, water, land and people, somewhere real. Supply chains, outsourcing and the cloud make those dependencies invisible. We strive to make them more visible, starting with the ones that are material to you.
2. Viability needs feedback loops, not just intentions. Plenty of organisations have excellent sustainability and responsible AI intentions. Without the feedback loops to detect their own impacts, and the governance to respond in time, those intentions are decorative.
3. Architecture can be a high leverage intervention. The biggest lever is rarely a switch of supplier or a purchase of offsets. It is the structural decisions, in business and technology architecture alike, that determine what an organisation consumes, what it depends on and what it enables downstream, for years after they are made.
4. Govern patterns, not content. Rapid change, from vibe-coded tools to fleets of AI agents, overwhelms governance that tries to approve every decision. Good governance sets constraints at the right level and lets teams move freely within them: guardrails that enable, not gates that block. We call this Dynamic Architecture.
How it works in practice
Without focus, any systems framework becomes a philosophy lecture. Pragmatic Ecosystems turns into action through five steps.
- Map where you sit. Which ecosystems, sectors and natural systems does your organisation depend on and affect? We start from your viewpoint, not a generic model.
- Find what is material. Borrowing double materiality from sustainability reporting: what in the wider system matters most to you (risks and dependencies), and where do your decisions have the most significant effect on it (impacts)? Usually a handful of connections matter far more than the rest.
- Measure honestly. Measure the impacts that matter across the business, not only the ones that are easy to count. Use open, comparable methods where they exist, such as DIST for digital impacts, and be clear about uncertainty rather than hiding it.
- Intervene through architecture. Change the decisions that change outcomes: operating model, products and channels, what you build, buy or share, where AI is used and how it is sized, what your defaults impose on customers and suppliers.
- Close the loop. Build the feedback that tells you whether it worked, and keep adjusting as the system changes around you.
Where we apply it
- Chief and Enterprise Architecture: architecture strategy and governance that see past the enterprise boundary.
- Pragmatic AI: putting AI on the right side of the equation, where it absorbs complexity rather than generating more of it.
- Sustainable and Responsible Technology: measuring and acting on the footprint of your technology, beyond carbon.
- Speaking, Chairing and Facilitation: workshops that help leadership teams see the whole system together.
Where it came from
Pragmatic Ecosystems has grown out of nearly a decade of practice and community work.
- 2017: Ecosystem Architecture. Oliver’s argument that architecture no longer stops at the enterprise boundary: organisations are participants in ecosystems, not the centre of them.
- 2019: Architect Tomorrow. A global community and podcast where these ideas are tested, challenged and extended, including the community’s Principles for Regenerative Architecture.
- Digital impacts. Oliver works with the Green Web Foundation on DIST, an open standard for reporting the impacts of digital services beyond carbon.
- 2026: Dynamic Architecture. Applying the same principles to a world where software and agents can be created in hours rather than months.
Intellectual foundations
We draw on established traditions, adapt what is useful and drop what does not survive contact with real organisations.
- Cybernetics and the Viable System Model: Stafford Beer and W. Ross Ashby on viability, feedback and requisite variety (see our quick reference for architects).
- Doughnut Economics: Kate Raworth’s safe and just space between a social foundation and an ecological ceiling.
- Planetary boundaries: the nine Earth system processes that define that ceiling. The Planetary Health Check 2025 found seven of the nine already breached.
- Circular economy: designing for longevity, repair and recovery, extended from hardware to software and data.
- Double materiality: from sustainability reporting, weighing both the risks the wider world poses to an organisation and the organisation’s impacts on it.
What it is not
- Not techno-optimism. Technology will not automatically solve the problems technology created.
- Not performative sustainability. Offsets and distant pledges are not the work.
- Not idealism. It has to work inside real organisations, with real budgets and real constraints.
- Not anti-technology. We are firmly pro-technology. We are against decisions made in abstraction from their consequences.
- Not a certification.
The Pragmatic Ecosystems framework is published under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; detailed methods and client assessments are delivered through Cronk Advisory engagements.
The biggest shift
Business and technology decisions don’t have to be made in abstraction. Supply chains, outsourcing, platforms, the cloud and AI models make organisations productive, but they also hide what sits underneath: the suppliers you depend on, the people affected by what you do, and the energy, materials, water and land that every product, process and service consumes. Pragmatic Ecosystems is our way of making those connections visible again, then focusing on the few that really matter to you.
If you would like to see what your organisation’s stack looks like, and which few connections matter most, get in touch.