Systemic Competitiveness
Systemic Competitiveness (SysCo) is a normative framework that helps to identify the institutionalised patterns of a society, industry, region or ecosystem.
The framework was developed in the mid-nineties by a group of scholars at the German Development Institute (GDI), including the late Mesopartner co-founder Dr Jörg Meyer-Stamer. It is a heuristic model that combines crucial insights from economics, social science, and other disciplines to understand the driving forces of economic development better.
The framework observes the socioeconomic system from five different vantage points and is characterised by four horizontal layers.
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The micro layer perspective, where people transact with each other or allocate resources and information, occurs through markets, networks and hierarchies.
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The macro layer perspective is where socioeconomic framework conditions are created through laws, institutions, and policies that similarly shape many sectors or places.
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The meta layer perspective is one in which the development-oriented patterns of political and economic organisations shape decisions about economic alternatives, success, and failure.
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The meso layer perspective involves creating targeted or specific interventions, organisations, and infrastructure to address persistent patterns of economic underperformance.
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The final perspective is about the dynamism between these different perspectives. In other words, how do changes or patterns in one perspective shape or affect the possibilities or patterns elsewhere? The dynamism between these perspectives explains why certain patterns persist or why certain changes are unfolding in different places without apparent coordination.
These five perspectives describe how the economy will likely change or why specific arrangements may persist over time. Due to the socioeconomic system's interdependence, a slight change in one area might have huge effects on another seemingly disconnected area. Similarly, a big change in one area might have little or no widespread effects.
It helps to evaluate the structure of production and flow of products or information in economies and to assess how responsive or valuable various institutional responses are to shape the exploration of alternative solutions. We can use Systemic Competitiveness to identify patterns, organisations, policies, sociocultural norms and framework conditions that shape the appetitive and direction of innovation in a socioeconomic system.
Systemic Competitiveness as a Cube
The challenge with our conventional use of Systemic Competitveness is that it is not easy to understand the interrelations between layers that are not adjoining. Also, people often get stuck trying to decide where organisations are instead of focusing on the different functions they perform in society.
To visualise dynamism in the Systemic Competitiveness framework, we placed the following six dimensions on the sides of a cube: meta, macro, meso and micro, history & emergence, and pressure to change. The volume inside the cube describes the dynamism connecting each side of the cube with every other side.
By looking at the cube from any given dimension, we can explore how each dimension affects the other dimensions and, in turn, how it is affected or responds to changes elsewhere. In other words, we investigate how each side is interconnected to all the other dimensions of the cube and what kind of dynamic shapes the information flows between the sides.
The exploration of dynamism allows us to explore how actors respond to new possibilities that may have been unforeseen a short while ago, in other words, how resilient the networks are and how strategic the leading actors are. It enables us to explore how new ideas are explored and seized upon and who the individual or organisational innovators are already confronting the emerging future despite the system's features or stable trajectory. The dynamism in the system is about a strategic orientation towards the future and recognising and seizing emergent possibilities that arise as a result of the co-evolution in the system and with the broader environment.
The Systemic Competitiness Cube method is being developed by Shawn Cunningham. Read the forthcoming Mesopartner Annual Reflection article for more information.
Mesopartner Resources
(Scroll to see more publications)
Assessment of meso organisations for opportunities for improvement
Global Value Chains, systemic competitiveness and endogeneity - methodological notes and relevance to economic policy
How to identify meso organisations
Making dynamism in the Systemic Competitiveness framework explicit
Meso level, meso space and the relation to territories
Meso organisations need to be innovative and anticipate future trends
Mesopartner Working Paper 09
Mesopartner Working Paper 14
The emergence of a meso space – Country Case Myanmar
The role of the meso level in enabling economic evolution
What and why meso organisations?
Why do meso organisations struggle to change?
Improving how you map Systemic Competitiveness
Mesopartner has developed a template to capture the results of a Systemic Competitiveness Cube reflection. The template can be drawn on flipchart paper or printed A1. One could write directly on the template, but we recommend using Post-it notes to populate the different layers.
When deciding where to put an organisation in the micro, meso, macro, or meta spheres, one should consider its function and the patterns it is responding to. Many organisations play multiple roles and might thus appear in different places on the map.
Additional Resources
