Heritage
HERITAGE
A framework built in public, and tested in the market
Julie Meyer established the EcosystemEconomics® framework in 2008. It has been developed continuously since — through the companies it backed, the industries it read correctly, and the firms that now use it to organise the economics of their own ecosystems.
18 YEARS of applying one framework across retail, transportation, telecoms, financial services and, now, artificial intelligence.
2008
The framework is established
Julie Meyer sets out EcosystemEconomics®: the observation that the winners in any industry are the firms that organise the economics of the ecosystem around them, rather than optimising only their own business.
2011
The thesis goes on the record
Writing for BBC News while the market debated whether LinkedIn and Groupon signalled a second technology bubble, Julie Meyer argued the opposite: the firms that would prosper were those offering the most inclusive economics to everyone in their ecosystem — consumers and developers alike.
The article named the framework in public for the first time.
2011
BeatThatQuote and Google
BeatThatQuote is sold to Google for £37.7 million — 122 times EBITDA on £250,000 of earnings. The multiple is the proof of the thesis: what Google was buying was a business cutting a different set of economics for the consumer, before it reached critical mass.
2008
Monitise
Rather than disrupting the banks, Monitise enabled them into mobile banking — a model built to pay the banks, the carriers and the consumer at once. It went on to power more than 250 financial institutions, and being outside the network became the disadvantage.
2012
Welcome to Entrepreneur Country
The framework reaches a general readership. Published by Little, Brown, and in Greek by Economia Publishing.
2015
David and Goliath must dance
The framework's central move is formalised: the Digital David brings the data and the business model, the Goliath brings customers, distribution, scale and reach. Neither wins alone. The Digital P&L™ gives the Goliath a way to measure the partnership before committing to it.
2018
An investment methodology
EcosystemEconomics® is codified as an investment methodology: identify the Digital Enablers organising the economics of a target ecosystem, and back them. Optimise for the system-level win.
2023
Mainstreaming the intruder
What the market still calls alternative assets are, on this reading, simply the network businesses — and they have become the critical path rather than a diversification. The counsel to incumbents changes accordingly: turn the intruder into a guest.
2026
Network Asset Value
The framework turns to the balance sheet. The Master Class sets out how fast growing technology firms should value what they have actually built — the data, the business model, the community — and reconcile it with what the market will pay.
18 YEARS, ONE ARGUMENT
The framework has not changed since 2008. What has changed is how much of the economy it now explains.