At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post The Ecosystem Economy: How Business Agility Will Shape—and Be Shaped by—Our $100 Trillion Future after reading the book, The Ecosystem Economy.

In that post, I discussed the shift toward an ecosystem economy, where interconnected networks of partnerships replace traditional sector siloes, enabling businesses to co-create value in unprecedented ways.

I have recently been reflecting on my career, and explored my role with eLogistics in 1999/2000, it’s clear that some of today’s ecosystem principles were already taking shape back then, especially in the logistics industry.

The eLogistics business began with a vision: to harness the power of emerging web technologies and bring new efficiency to freight transport operators. eLogistics mission was simple yet ambitious—to use technology to make freight planning smarter, faster, and more interconnected.

eLogistics built a suite of products in-house to support transport operators, giving them advanced tools for operational planning and traffic desk management.

As an architect and development lead with eLogistics, at the start of their journey, I specialized in inter-organizational middleware systems that automated business processes, so used tools such as Extricity B2B Alliance Manager and Java. Creating solutions that reflect the essence of today’s digital ecosystems.

These efforts led to successful B2B integration and collaborative e-commerce by addressing business needs, leveraging technologies, and developing effective strategies. The solutions empowered logistics and partner companies with robust B2B integration and collaborative e-commerce capabilities. This involved managing intricate dependencies among all components of B2B integration, including integration patterns, enterprise application integration (EAI), business process management (BPM), Internet security, Extensible Markup Language (XML), XML Standards for E-Business, Web services, middleware technologies, and integration brokers.

Our most impactful innovation was a powerful match engine at the core of our system, designed to optimize the use of haulage and freight capacity. This match engine enabled customers to take up spare capacity across networks, balancing the needs of transport companies and customers in real-time. It was a complex solution, requiring us to integrate with multiple transport systems and customer interfaces to ensure that the right resources were always in the right place, at the right time.

To support freight transport planners and traffic office managers, we developed visual tools tailored to their needs. These tools helped them make informed decisions, reduce administrative burden, improve communication, and transform their operational efficiency. By understanding their challenges deeply, we created a suite of products that delivered quality and value, strengthening our position in the industry.

As eLogistics grew, so did the ecosystem. eLogistics partnered with like-minded businesses that shared their commitment to innovation and customer value. Together, they expanded capabilities and met the evolving demands of UK-based customers.

Looking back, it’s fascinating to see how these early innovations foreshadowed the ecosystem economy we’re seeing now. The logistics exchange we built was an early form of an ecosystem, allowing multiple players to connect, share resources, and create value collaboratively. Today’s ecosystem economy is taking these ideas further, transcending industry borders and pushing organizations to adapt their value streams to an interconnected world.

Closing Thoughts

For businesses navigating this future, the lessons from eLogistics remain relevant: understand the unique needs of each stakeholder, leverage technology to create efficiency, and build partnerships that allow the ecosystem to thrive.

These principles are just as critical now as they were then, perhaps even more so in a world that’s increasingly defined by collaborative value creation.