The Nature of Partnerships

Interface, a carpet tile manufacturer with a mission to erase all its environmental impacts, and the Zoological Society of London, a UK-based worldwide conservation charity, have combined their efforts in the ‘Net-Works’ project: recycling discarded fishing nets from coastal communities of the Philippines into carpets, bringing social and environmental impacts as well as an alternative source of nylon to produce carpets.

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Coastal communities in the Philippines collect the nets for Net-Works[/caption]

While other businesses would favour organic growth, learning by experience, acquisitions and avoiding the risks of sharing information and profits, Interface is in a process of open innovation to find alternative solutions (also called co-innovation). Innovating by collaborating with organisations such as 100% Open facilitates this process of bringing together different brains, perspectives and know-how in order to re-think models and ideas. David Simoes-Brown, who co-founded 100% Open, describes open innovation as “innovating with partners by sharing the risks and the rewards”, with the key benefits of open innovation being that “it gets you bigger innovations faster and cheaper”. This same mindset has been applied to the Net-Works project.

There have always been surprising and innovative partnerships. A powerful example of a partnership that combined the strengths of different organisations to bring social impacts is ColaLife. An ex aid-worker in Africa realized that simple medicine could prevent 20% of child mortality, but these weren’t accessible to remote villages. What was available in these remote villages was the emblematic bottle of Coca-Cola. So? He partnered with Coca-Cola’s local bottler and used the spaces in between bottles to distribute medicines and reach these villages, saving thousands of lives.

The 20th century was about pure growth, but the 21st century is now about growing while re-thinking how we do things. In that context, partnering and joining forces will become ever more important.

What can we learn from these best practices? What’s special about the Net-Works partnership? Why did Coca-Cola partner with ColaLife?

Here’s what I learned and what I think are the key success factors in a partnership:

1. Win-Win: It’s a trait in all good partnerships. Be it for profit or not, people and organisations do things for a reason, so everyone needs to benefit from it.
2. Clear Rules: Everyone knows their place and responsibilities. A partnership is about teamwork so roles need to be defined and organisations need to be accountable.
3. Open: Just like at home, if you’ve got something to say, say it. It shouldn’t be any different than with your own colleagues.
4. Unbiased: the stakes should, as much as possible, be equally important for both parties. Decisions should, therefore, be made in the best interest of both parties.
5. Shared vision: Although you might have different end-goals, sharing a vision and values will engage everyone and help you agree on decisions.

This is not an exhaustive list (!) and I’m sure you can think of others. Each partnership teaches you different lessons, so share examples of other innovative partnerships and lessons learnt in the comments below!