Meet Scott Brinker, the "Godfather of Martech" who's been mapping the technology landscape since 2011 when there were just 150 tools. Today, that number exceeds 14,000... and Scott's still updating the map. In this episode of The Ecosystem Experience, we explore why ecosystems keep exploding in complexity, how to think strategically about what's actually a system, and why being slightly more agile than your competitors is all you need to win.
Scott takes us back to the early days when senior marketers saw technology as a betrayal of marketing itself. The first landscape graphic wasn't meant to become an annual ritual... it was simply exhibit A in a case for why marketing teams needed to invest in technical talent. Nobody expected the exponential growth that followed: 300 to 900 to 2,000 to 4,000 tools. What shocked Scott most wasn't the growth itself, but that innovation was happening simultaneously across every single category, year after year.
We discuss the myth of consolidation. Yes, companies get acquired and others fail constantly, but the entrance rate of new startups keeps outpacing the exit rate. This dynamic had never been seen in software before martech... and now it's everywhere. FinTech, engineering tech, and cybersecurity landscapes are all larger than martech. Scott reveals there's also a "dark ecosystem" of internal builds and private solutions that never appear on any map, potentially doubling or tripling the actual number of tools organisations are managing.
From the explosion of SaaS enabling non-technical founders to start companies, to the reality that AI isn't a category but a capability being baked into everything, Scott explains why ecosystems will continue fragmenting. We explore his concept of "Martec's Law"... technology changes exponentially whilst organisations change logarithmically. You can't magically make your organisation change faster, but you can be strategic about which changes to embrace and ruthlessly decide which ones to let go.
Scott challenges the common trap of viewing partnerships as isolated, point-to-point relationships. Real ecosystem leadership requires understanding system dynamics, thinking about second-order and third-order effects, and recognising that pulling one lever here will create ripples everywhere else. He's blunt about what happens when you don't think this way: you'll suddenly find yourself fighting fires because something you did over here exploded something over there.
Whether you're building in an ecosystem, managing partnerships at a platform company, or trying to make sense of the overwhelming technology landscape, Scott offers a masterclass in systems thinking. He reminds us that we're not playing a single-player game... this is multiplayer, and being just slightly more agile than your competitors is enough. The key is choosing your battles wisely and investing in organisational agility, not trying to do everything everywhere all at once.