8 Things We Learned From Building A Multi-Sector Partnering Hub
by Asia P3 Hub team, edited by Jaya Myler
What does it take to build a vibrant, innovative multi-sector hub, that is a safe space for the people, public and private sectors to come together? How can we harness the power of collaboration to find new solutions to social and development challenges?
Cross-sector partnerships can be an incredibly valuable tool for achieving greater impact. However, partnering doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and navigating effective partnerships takes a lot of work.
Here are 8 things Asia P3 Hub learned from building a multi-sector partnering hub, and incubating multi-sector partnerships bringing together collaborators from the people, public and private sectors (P3).
1. No Short Cuts
There are no short cuts. Multi-sector partnerships with a true spirit of mutual benefit, equity and transparency require time to simmer. They require intentionality and perseverance.
2. Need For A Safe Space
It’s incredibly important to create a safe, neutral space for partners from all sectors to come together, explore the potential for partnership, share ideas, passion and diverse resources, and co-create solutions the world’s toughest challenges.
3. Combinatorial Innovation
We can’t say this enough, we learned time and again the power of combinatorial innovation — the art and science of creating something new from existing resources — not just across partners but within a team. Explore possible new sources of value.
4. Insiders and Outsiders
The need for what Sujin Jang calls cultural insiders and outsiders. Jang distinguishes ‘cultural insiders’ from ‘cultural outsiders’ and observes that they enhanced their teams’ creative performance through distinct roles — integrating knowledge and eliciting knowledge respectively. Leveraging diversity in teams. Different languages. People who can act as ‘bridges’ and ‘boats’.
5. Mindset Shift
“New thinking is useful for understanding a human reality that has been transformed by disruptive technologies and many other changes — that result in what evolutionary psychologists call a ‘mismatch’ between our evolved sensibilities and our modern environment,” as our good friend, Sriven Naidu says. And as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “A mind once stretched (…), never returns to its original dimensions.”
6. Creativity and Adaptability
Creativity and being nimble and adaptable are incredibly important in this complex and often ambiguous environment.
7. Active Gratitude
Practice active gratitude. It is a joy to celebrate professional and life milestones together. Appreciate and acknowledge positive results.
8. Open Is Good
Embracing a mindset of generosity, abundance and kindness creates actions and an environment that enables cooperation and sharing. These do not cause partners to receive less. These create a multiplier effect where everyone receives more.
When Asia P3 Hub was getting started — building our multi-sector partnership platform to tackle poverty issues — we looked for examples of a similar ‘partnering hub’ in Asia. But we failed to find an innovative, collaboration-focused initiative that we could learn from, benchmark, or replicate their model.
And many of the things we’ve learned along the way have surprised us.
We believe in the power of sharing our experience, in the hopes that many more will take up the challenge and joy of a collaborative approach, harnessing collective action to find and co-create new solutions.
So we’ve open-sourced what we’ve done, sharing what worked and what didn’t, so that you can learn from our 3 years of experience and experimentation — how we built a multi-sector partnering hub and you can too.
Read more about our journey what we’ve learned along the way on the new Hub-in-a-Box platform.
