Facilitation
Pioneer businesses create brand awareness, prove market demand, establish supplier relationships, develop initial capabilities, and accumulate capital.
Your success as a pioneer creates opportunities for followers. Every investment in ecosystem (training developers, scaling suppliers, educating consumers) makes it easier for followers to compete.
Facilitation occurs when early colonists modify environments in ways that enable later colonists to establish. The classic example involves nitrogen fixation - legumes and alders harbor bacteria that convert atmospheric nitrogen to forms accessible to plants, enriching nitrogen-poor soils. Subsequent non-fixing species benefit from this enrichment, allowing species that couldn't establish initially to colonize later. Facilitation is most important in harsh environments where environmental modification is necessary for subsequent colonization.
Business Application of Facilitation
Pioneer businesses create brand awareness, prove market demand, establish supplier relationships, develop initial capabilities, and accumulate capital. These facilitation assets enable intermediate-stage businesses that couldn't have started from zero. Understanding your facilitation assets reveals which successor businesses are accessible and which require starting from zero.
Facilitation Appears in 2 Chapters
Nitrogen-fixing pioneers enrich depleted soils, enabling non-fixing species that couldn't establish without facilitation.
Facilitation in succession →Each successional stage creates conditions for the next - without lichens weathering rock, no soil exists for subsequent species.
Sequential facilitation in forests →