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Business model · Explore

Platform / ecosystem map

Maps who else creates value around your product and what your position among them is. Genuinely important where network effects exist, and a distraction where they do not — which is most places.

The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.

Stage
02 Explore
Works at
Corporate, Business
Maturity
Scaling → Large organisation
Time
Half a day

What it is

A map of the participants creating value around a product or market, and the flows between them. It matters where network effects exist and where a business's position depends on others' choices rather than only its own.

Participants
Everyone creating or capturing value in the space: complementors, developers, resellers, data providers, communities, regulators.
Value flows
What moves between participants — money, data, attention, capability, distribution. Frequently not aligned with contractual relationships.
Your position
Platform, complementor, participant or intermediary. Determines how much of the value you can capture and how much you control.
Network effects
Whether more participants make the thing more valuable, and for whom. Where absent, this is a supply chain diagram with ambition.
Governance
Who sets the rules — access, pricing, data, standards. Governance rights are the real asset in an ecosystem, more than share.
Dependency and exposure
Where another participant's decision would materially change your economics.
The mistake people makeMost markets do not have network effects, and drawing an ecosystem map for one that does not produces an elaborate picture of ordinary trading relationships. Establish the effect exists before spending the afternoon.
What it’s forValue in your market is moving from products to networks and you need to see your position in it.
What it’s not forYour market has no network effects. Most do not.

How you run it

  1. Establish there is an ecosystem firstSuppliers and resellers are a value chain, not an ecosystem. An ecosystem exists where participants create value for each other, not just for you.
  2. Map the participants and what each contributesComplementors, developers, resellers, data providers, communities. Include the ones you have no relationship with.
  3. Draw the value flows, not the contractsWho gains what from whom. Value frequently flows in directions no commercial agreement describes.
  4. Be honest about your positionPlatform, complementor or participant. Most businesses that describe themselves as platforms are participants on somebody else's.
  5. Find the dependencyWhere does someone else's decision determine your economics? That is the exposure, and it usually arrives without notice.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

  • Evidence that value genuinely flows between third parties, not just through you
  • A view of who else touches your customer
  • Honesty about whether you are the platform or a participant

You’ll end up with

  • The ecosystem drawn, with value flows marked
  • Your actual position in it
  • Where you are exposed to a platform shift

Runs well with

Acquisition screen and synergy thesisAdjacency mapAI opportunity mapAnalysis plan