Analyzing Organizational Elements

Strategic intent: Make the organizational layer of the Portfolio Map coherent — what should be a Micro-Enterprise (core, productized vertical), what should sit in an Industry Platform (strategic domain investment), what should be a Shared Service Platform (cross-ME enabler), what becomes external?

#Overview

This is the second of two dual-focus analyses on the Portfolio Map. While Market-Facing Analysis looks outward at customers, this technique looks inward at the organization through the 3EO topology.

The 3EO framework — developed by Boundaryless in collaboration with Haier Model Research Institute and inspired by Haier's RenDanHeYi — provides the canonical platform-organization topology:

• Micro-Enterprises (MEs) — autonomous, entrepreneurial units with their own P&L responsibility. Essentially Product Units owning specific value propositions.
• Industry Platforms (IPs) — strategic entities providing investment and incubation to MEs and ensuring strategic alignment in specific market domains. They define the Where to Play at a domain level.
• Shared Service Platforms (SSPs) — enabling infrastructures providing common services across MEs (HR, Finance, Legal, sometimes Sales/Marketing, often the horizontal technology platforms identified in market-facing analysis).
• Ecosystem Micro-Communities (EMCs) — dynamic contracts enabling collaboration between units to bring new products and services to market. Where new value emerges across MEs and external partners.
• Valuation Adjustment Mechanisms (VAMs) — investment agreements between Industry Platforms and Micro-Enterprises that define goals, resources, and value-sharing arrangements while ensuring strategic alignment.

The 3EO topology is not prescriptive. It's a set of archetypes — much like Team Topologies — that each organization adapts to context.

#When to use it

• After Portfolio Data Collection has produced a validated map
• In parallel with Market-Facing Analysis; synthesis happens after both
• When considering organizational restructuring, make/buy/partner decisions, or shared service consolidation
• When P&L attribution is unclear or contested
• When the team is exploring a 3EO transition

#Composition

This technique works on the lowest layer of the Portfolio Map Canvas and connects directly to the 3EO Map, Micro-Enterprise Canvas, Ecosystem Micro-Community Canvas, and VAM Canvas.

1. #1. Classify each organizational element

   For each element (team, unit, capability, infrastructure), determine its role in the 3EO topology:

   • Is this a Micro-Enterprise candidate? Owns a vertical / product unit with P&L responsibility, customer-facing, differentiated.
   • Is this an Industry Platform candidate? Strategic domain entity providing investment and incubation, defining the Where to Play at domain level.
   • Is this a Shared Service Platform candidate? Cross-cutting capability serving multiple MEs (typical: horizontal tech platforms, HR, Finance, Legal, Sales/Marketing).
   • Is this External? Generic / commodity, available externally, no strategic differentiation.

   Apply the test rigorously. "We're emotionally attached" is not a reason to keep something internal.

2. #2. Apply Domain-Driven Design as a sanity check

   The DDD lens cross-validates the 3EO classification:

   • Core domains → Micro-Enterprises (where you differentiate, own fully)
   • Supporting domains → Shared Service Platforms (necessary, not differentiating, shared)
   • Generic domains → External (outsource, buy SaaS, partner)

   Where DDD and the customer-facing taxonomy disagree, interrogate why. The horizontal-vertical analysis from Market-Facing Analysis often reveals that horizontals belong to SSPs (or potentially their own IPs when the platform itself is a strategic asset).

3. #3. Re-bundle by domain

   Some current organizational units span multiple domains (e.g., a team doing both core differentiation work and commodity infrastructure). These are candidates for re-bundling:

   • Split mixed-domain teams along DDD lines
   • Consolidate dispersed supporting capabilities into SSPs
   • Externalize generic activities

   Each re-bundling has costs (transition friction, political resistance) — surface them explicitly.

4. #4. Frame the EMCs and VAMs

   For each ME and ME↔ME / ME↔SSP relationship, define the agreement:

   • VAM contracts — between Industry Platforms and MEs: goals, resources, value-sharing, strategic alignment
   • EMCs (Ecosystem Micro-Communities) — dynamic contracts enabling collaboration across MEs (and potentially with external partners) to bring new products and services to market
   • SSP service agreements — what is delivered, at what SLA, with what pricing model (flat / usage-based / cost-allocation)
   • Quality criteria — how is performance evaluated
   • Escalation path — what happens when expectations are missed

   These become the recurring organizational agreements that govern internal markets.

5. #5. Frame P&L and TCO per ME

   For each ME, articulate:

   • Revenue attribution — what offerings does this ME enable, how does revenue flow
   • Direct costs — what does this ME consume directly
   • Allocated costs — share of SSP services consumed (per the agreements)
   • Total Cost of Ownership — full cost including indirect dependencies

   The output is a per-ME P&L view, even if the formal accounting hasn't caught up yet.

6. #6. Identify topology moves

   Strategic moves emerging from the analysis:

   • Promote — a supporting capability that's becoming differentiating → upgrade to ME or even Industry Platform
   • Demote — a former core that's now commodity → externalize
   • Consolidate — multiple SSPs serving similar functions → merge
   • Split — an oversized ME doing too many things → split along sub-domains
   • Acquire — a missing core capability → build or buy
   • Charter an Industry Platform — when a strategic domain emerges that requires multi-ME investment and coordination

#Inputs

• Required: validated preliminary Portfolio Map (organizational layer populated)
• Required: stakeholder interview data (Ops, Domain Leads, SSP managers)
• Required: outputs from Market-Facing Analysis — the horizontal-vertical taxonomy informs SSP/ME boundaries
• Recommended: current cost structure (per team / unit) for P&L framing

#Outputs

• 3EO topology classification — each element labeled ME / IP / SSP / External
• Re-bundling proposals — where current units don't match topology
• Agreement specifications — VAMs, EMCs, SSP service contracts
• Per-ME P&L sketch — revenue attribution and cost allocation
• Strategic topology moves — promote / demote / consolidate / split / acquire / charter
• A clear internal-market design ready for implementation

#Process heuristics

• Core is rare — most organizations have 2–4 truly core domains (and corresponding Industry Platforms), not 10
• Horizontal platforms typically map to SSPs — but when a platform is strategic enough, it deserves its own Industry Platform
• SSPs are not cost centers — they should operate as internal businesses with clear value propositions and pricing
• Generic doesn't mean unimportant — payroll is generic but its failure is catastrophic. Buy or partner the generic.
• Beware "strategic" capabilities that have no market — if it doesn't differentiate the market offering, it's not strategic
• Industry Platforms enable nested strategic choices — the corporate aspiration cascades down to domain-level Where to Play and How to Win, then to ME-level VAM-encoded targets

#Validation criteria

• Every organizational element has a 3EO classification (ME / IP / SSP / External)
• DDD cross-check applied; disagreements between DDD and customer-facing taxonomy investigated
• Core MEs linked to specific differentiating offerings
• At least one re-bundling proposal articulated (or "none, here's why")
• Agreement specifications exist for at least the largest ME-SSP and ME-ME relationships
• Per-ME P&L sketch is plausible (within 20% of true numbers, even if data is incomplete)
• At least 3 strategic topology moves identified

#Common mistakes

• Everyone is a Micro-Enterprise — the test wasn't applied rigorously
• Politically convenient classification — labels assigned to avoid conflict, not based on analysis
• Treating SSPs as cost centers — they should operate as internal businesses
• Skipping VAM and EMC design — the topology without the agreements is just a diagram
• Skipping P&L — without economic clarity, topology decisions are political, not strategic
• Ignoring transition costs — re-bundling is expensive; evaluate cost-benefit explicitly
• Forcing 100% topology adherence — the framework is heuristic, not prescriptive

#Used in pipelines

• Portfolio Mapping — as Phase 3 (dual focus, organizational side)

#Connections

• Requires: Portfolio Data Collection
• Pairs with: Market-Facing Analysis — same map, opposite side
• Feeds: Portfolio Strategy Implementation
• Connects to: the entire 3EO Toolkit — MEs, EMCs, VAMs are 3EO concepts; the legacy guide details their internal design

#Related reading

• Playing to Win in Platform Organizations — full 3EO topology with IPs, MEs, SSPs, EMCs, VAMs and Roger Martin's strategy framework
• An Entrepreneurial, Ecosystem-enabling Organization — the 3EO origin essay
• Building Ecosystem Organizations — early framing of the model
• 3EO Toolkit Adoption Guide — for deep dives on ME and SSP design
• From Bureaucracy to Market: How Chargebacks Can Transform Your Organization — for the internal-market mechanics