Many companies now describe themselves as ecosystems. The word suggests connection, but placing several businesses under one name does not by itself create value for the people they serve. What turns a group of companies into a working ecosystem is whether their activities fit together around a customer's actual needs, and whether that fit is managed on purpose.
Ecosystems Are Defined by Alignment
Adner (2017) describes an ecosystem as a structure: the set of partners and activities that must be aligned for a value proposition to come to life. The emphasis falls on who does what, in what sequence, and how handoffs between participants are handled. Seen this way, an ecosystem is less a family of brands and more a coordination task. If one participant's work is late, poorly specified or incompatible with the next step, the overall proposition fails, however capable each participant may be on its own.
This view is as useful for clients and partners as it is for the businesses involved. When engaging a multi-business group, the question worth asking is not how many services are on offer, but how the group makes those services connect. Who owns the interface between design and construction, for example, or between a project plan and the equipment and premises it depends on?
Where Complementarity Really Comes From
Jacobides, Cennamo and Gawer (2018) argue that ecosystems are distinguished by complementarities: relationships in which one offering becomes more valuable when combined with another, and in which coordination cannot simply be left to ordinary market transactions. Not every pairing of businesses meets this test. Two units can sit in the same group and share a visual identity yet have little to offer each other's customers.
Genuine complementarity usually shows up at specific moments in a customer's journey. An organisation fitting out a new office may need a design team, a contractor, temporary vehicles or premises during the move, and support in preparing its people and documentation for compliance. Each need can be met separately. The benefit of an ecosystem appears when the sequence is planned as a whole, reducing gaps, duplicated effort and conflicting schedules. Where no such sequence exists, forcing integration only adds coordination cost.
How the Pusaka Ecosystem Is Organised
Pusaka Group brings together businesses in project coordination, design and construction, food market development, rentals and consulting. Pusaka Project Partner acts as a project integrator, combining planning, procurement, resource coordination and implementation oversight. Artha Karya Studio provides architectural and interior design, construction, renovation and fit-out. Sewaguna offers property, vehicle and corporate rental solutions. Futura Foods develops markets for, and distributes, sorghum-based food ingredients produced by a partner company, while Pandu Adya Consulting supports organisations with human resources solutions, certification and compliance facilitation, and monitoring and evaluation.
Each of these businesses remains accountable for its own work. Connections between them are pursued where a client's needs genuinely span more than one capability, not on the assumption that shared affiliation produces synergy automatically. A project integrator can coordinate a sister unit or an independent specialist; the deciding factor is which option serves the client's scope best.
Principles for Connecting Business Units
- Map the customer journey first. Trace how a client's needs unfold from stage to stage before deciding which services belong together.
- Connect only what genuinely complements. Link services where the combination improves the outcome for the customer, and keep them separate where it does not.
- Make decision rights explicit. Agree who leads, who supports and who resolves conflicts at each interface between units.
- Measure the connections, not only the units. Track cross-unit referrals and the quality of joint delivery, so integration is judged by evidence rather than intention.
An ecosystem earns its name when its connections are managed as carefully as its individual businesses. For a diversified group, the most consequential work often happens at the boundaries: the handoffs, shared plans and agreed responsibilities that allow a client to move from one capability to the next without having to start over.
