As technology continues to move at a breakneck pace — with social, mobile, analytics, cloud and other technologies driving the rapid evolution of digital businesses — pioneering enterprises are rewriting the digital playbook.  They’re stretching their boundaries by tapping into a broad array of other digital businesses, digital customers and even digital devices at the edge of their networks to create ‘digital ecosystems’ that are re-shaping entire markets and changing the way we work and live.

Accenture’s annual outlook of global technology trends — Accenture Technology Vision 2015 — found that these visionary companies recognize that as every business becomes a digital business, together they can effect change on a much bigger stage, collaborating to shape experiences, and outcomes, in ways never before possible.  As a result, these leading enterprises are shaping a new economy — the “We Economy.”

This shift is highlighted best in the rapidly growing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) — i.e., the interconnection of embedded computing devices within the existing Internetinfrastructure — as companies are using these connections to offer new services, reshape experiences and enter new markets through these digital ecosystems.

Home Depot, for example, is trying to shape the way people live through an emerging connected home market.  The retailer is working with manufacturers to ensure that the connected home products it sells are compatible with the Wink connected home system, thereby creating its own connected home ecosystem, with a wide range of services that are easy to install.

Philips is taking a similar approach with its healthcare practice teaming up with Salesforce to build a platform that they believe will reshape and optimize the way healthcare is delivered.  The envisioned platform will create an ecosystem of developers building healthcare applications to enable collaboration and workflow between doctors and patients across the entire spectrum of care, from self-care and prevention to diagnosis and treatment through recovery and wellness.

Within the automotive industry, Fiat is looking toward connected cars as the next growth opportunity — partnering with companies like TomTom, Reuters, Facebook and TuneIn to create its own Uconnect platform, which will be integrated with the Fiat-Chrysler Group’s vehicles to provide drivers with communication, entertainment and navigation features that can help drivers stay focused on driving.

By tapping into digital ecosystems, these and other companies are making big bets on opportunities that have the potential to bring about change on a global scale, realizing ambitions that transcend any single business or industry.

The new power brokers will be the master orchestrators that place themselves at the center of these digital ecosystems.  These leaders will quickly master new digital relationships with their customers, end users, suppliers, alliance partners, developers, data sources, makers of smart devices, and sources of specialty talent.  All will share the same goals: to grow new markets… and their individual businesses.