Caroline Lucas, Director Special Projects at TEXEM UK, the United Kingdom based leadership development organisation has observed that lack of good ecosystem designs has become a huge challenge for most African leaders and CEOs.
Lucas made the observation in a statement posted on TEXEM’ website, www.texem.co.uk while speaking about the organisation’s next programme on ‘Winning in the age of ecosystems’ coming up later this month.
‘We are proud to be bringing African leaders and CEOs together around a theme that speaks directly to the defining challenge of this business era: Winning in the Age of Ecosystems.
‘Across boardrooms and strategy sessions on the continent, we continue to see a troubling pattern, that is, organisations with sound strategies, capable leadership, and strong market positions still struggle to execute.
‘The reason is rarely a failure of ambition or intellect. It is, more often, a failure of ecosystem design,’ she said.
Lucas noted further that strategy no longer succeeds or fails within the four walls of a single organisation.
‘It succeeds or fails within a web of relationships, which includes suppliers, regulators, technology partners, distributors, financiers, communities, and competitors who increasingly collaborate as much as they compete.
‘When this ecosystem is poorly designed, disconnected, or an afterthought bolted onto strategy after the fact, even the most capable organisation will find its execution weakened at every turn,’ the director said.
According to Lucas, fagmentation is the silent killer of good strategy.
‘When departments operate as silos, when partners are engaged transactionally rather than strategically, when digital platforms don’t talk to each other, and when leadership fails to architect coherence across the value chain, the result is friction, slower decisions, duplicated effort, misaligned incentives, and initiatives that stall before they scale.
‘We have seen strong organisations, with strong people and strong balance sheets, lose ground not because they lacked vision, but because their ecosystems worked against them rather than for them.
‘This is especially urgent for African businesses today. As markets integrate under frameworks like the AfCFTA, as digital platforms reshape customer expectations, and as global capital and talent become more mobile, the organisations that win will not simply be the ones with the best internal strategy,’ she said.
Lucas said they will be the ones that design, curate, and orchestrate ecosystems deliberately by building interoperability, trust, and shared value with the partners, institutions, and communities around them.
She said the coming TEXEM programme exists to equip African leaders and CEOs with precisely this capability that is, the mindset and tools to move from managing organisations to architecting ecosystems.
Lucas said TEXEM is inviting participants from Africa to interrogate their own fragmentation including where silos exist, where partnerships are underleveraged, where coherence has been sacrificed for speed, and to leave the programme with a sharpened ability to design ecosystems that amplify, rather than undermine, their strategic intent.
‘In this age, the leaders who win will not be those who build the strongest fortress. They will be those who build the strongest network,’ she said.
The statement also announced that the TEXEM programme, ‘Winning in the Age of Ecosystems’ will be from 24th to 27th August 2026 in York, United Kingdom adding that African leaders and CEOs will acquire more insights on how to excel in an age of ecosystems during the occasion.
Three reputable TEXEM faculty, Professor Wim Vanhaverbeke, Professor Nic Cheeseman and John Peters, are expected to deliver the programme.
Professor Wim Vanhaverbeke is a global authority on Digital Transformation, a Professor (Emeritus) of Digital Strategy and Transformation at the University of Antwerp and Antwerp Management School recognised worldwide for advancing open innovation and ecosystem management.
On industry – focused research, his work explores how digital strategies and innovation ecosystems reshape sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, and energy.
With respect to prestigious academic appointments, he has held visiting professorships at top institutions including the National University of Singapore, Zhejiang University (China), ESADE Business School (Spain), and Politecnico di Milano (Italy).
As an influential scholar, he has published in leading journals such as Organization Science, Research Policy, Technovation, and California Management Review.
He is also a renowned author and editor who has co-edited four books on open innovation and authored Managing Open Innovation in SMEs (Cambridge University Press); Editor-in-Chief of Technovation, the leading innovation management journal.
He advises global corporations and public organisations on ecosystem strategy, sustainability – driven innovation, and digital transformation; delivers executive and MBA programmes worldwide.
As a thought leader bridging academic and practice, he combines rigorous research with practical insight to help leaders harness collaboration and innovation for competitive advantage in the digital era.
Professor Nic Cheeseman is a former Professor and Director of the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford.
He has advised world leaders including the Secretary-General of the UN, Presidents of nations as well as Global CEOs.
He is a leading scholar on democracy, elections and governance in Africa. Also a regular media commentator and editor of Democracy in Africa.
He has advised governments and international organisations on democratic accountability, good governance, strategic leadership, geopolitics and electoral integrity.
John Peters (RAF officer) is a former Chair of Association of MBAs (Accreditors of top Business Schools such as Harvard, London Business School, Stanford and IMD).
Also a world-renowned Resilience expert with documentary on his life winning Independent Documentary of the Year and was also nominated for a BAFTA award.
He is a former RAF fast jet pilot and Gulf War Prisoner of War; and later Director of Performance at Aston Business School.
He is an international keynote speaker leadership under pressure and leading in turbulence.https://texem.co.uk/winning-in-the-age-of-ecosystems/
Interested participants in the York programme are expected to click on the link:
‘This programme is designed to equip you with the frameworks necessary to lead that evolution, transforming institutional hurdles into collaborative gateways for unprecedented success,’ Lucas said.
The following testimonials from past delegates of TEXEM programmes were also shared in the statement.
‘We’re dealing with an organisation that’s relevant in today’s world and bringing in all that knowledge to bear. And so its quite a remarkable organization. So TEXEM will be good on my lips for recommendations going forward. Thank you,’. -Previous TEXEM delegate, Mr Abel Nsa Senior Technical Adviser (TSA) to the Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ministry of Petroleum Resources Abuja.
‘Wow! It’s so fully packed and the quality of the faculty is second to none…I think the quality of their presentation really got to me. I’ve realized… that practical and operational issues can be left to the middle level officers in the organisation while I focus more on the strategy to deliver and make my organisation better able to achieve its objective’.
-Previous TEXEM delegate, Mr Oluwatoyin Ahmed Edu, Executive Director, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Bank of Industry.
‘The programme is quite rich, the content is very insightful, impactful and the content is in fact directed and tailored towards the contemporary leadership challenges we have in the country, or specific and that are directed towards leadership challenges in the country which is strategic leadership in the digital age because we are evolving and we have to be futuristic’. -Previous TEXEM delegate, Kingsley Emeka Egwuh, Assistant Comptroller General, Nigeria Customs Service.