Defined by Dictionary.com as:
“any system or network of interconnecting and interacting parts, as in a business”
We all have ecosystems — aka large interconnected areas of our life — but we usually don’t break them down into their component systems. This means we lack causative understanding, and can’t really control it.
For example health is a massive ecosystem, but few people ever break down the ecosystem into it’s interactive parts and work progressively and procedurally. So they might wonder why they end up with bad health and maybe blame it on bad luck. But the underlying cause was a Slight Edge working against them because they didn’t fix a single habit of flossing or some small interacting part.
Cars are also great examples. They don’t just implode, they have specific parts that fail in specific ways, that produce bad results. But someone might think that if they look at a vehicle as a single system instead of an ecosystem involving many interacting and interdependent systems.
Once we begin to understand ecosystems in terms of their specific systems, this gives us the ability to make small changes that have powerful outcomes.