You might think there's nothing all that remarkable about using your iPhone to pay for a bus ride or instructing Alexa to order the groceries. But look closer, and these trivial transactions signal an evolutionary advance in the way organisations operate. Indeed, this may be as far-reaching as the move from single-cell to multi-cell organisms in the natural world, or (in business terms) the invention of the joint-stock or large limited company. In short, these technologies mark the emergence of the business ecosystem. Consider that iPhone. When Steve Jobs launched the first generation in 2007, he intended it to be a 'walled garden' - a domain reserved for Apple software and hardware. But when he reluctantly opened the App Store to outsiders a few months later, something extraordinary happened. Fast-forward to 2019, and owners can use their devices to do everything from making fart noises to real rocket science, all via the millions of apps offered by more than 500,000 developers, to whom Apple paid out $27bn last year. Add in $8bn for Apple's share of the app revenues - and even more for third-party hardware accessories - and it's easy to reach a value of $40bn for the iPhone ecosystem alone, a business that didn't exist 12 years ago.
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