A recent article, subtitled Harnessing Ecosystem Thinking for Strategic Growth[1] is both interesting and accurate, and also aligns well with Inventures tagline, “Accelerating Results through Collaboration.” At Inventures, we have been promoting the creation/development of ecosystems as a means of growing a business or market. In fact, Inventures founder, Deepak Kamlani, wrote a paper 20+ years ago titled Standards and Competitive Technology Strategy. The concept is simply that if we create a bigger pie, then everyone gets a bigger piece! This “Coopeitition,” collaboration between competitors to build a bigger ecosystem, “creates mutual value and drives collective progress.”
These consortia or alliances of competitors are becoming a powerful trend as companies from different industries can combine their expertise, resources, and technologies to tackle complex challenges, create innovative solutions, and set new industry standards. These collaborations leverage the unique strengths of each partner to achieve outcomes that would be difficult to accomplish independently.
The benefits of these collaborations include:
- Accelerating innovation
- Expanding market reach
- Leveraging shared expertise
- Access to research and deep technical expertise
In an earlier Inventures article, The Blueprint for Successful Industry Alliances, we outlined many of the ingredients necessary for creating collaborations of competitors, as it’s not a trivial process. After forming a technology alliance collaboration, ongoing management of the organization and effort is required to ensure success. We suggest that measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) can help determine whether or not a technology alliance is healthy and progressing towards achieving the mission of the organization.
Some proposed KPIs, organized into three categories, to monitor the success of the organization are as follows:
- Financial KPIs: Calculated and monitored by the individual member companies of the collaboration, as much of the information required to determine these KPIs cannot be shared without violating antitrust regulations and policies.
- Revenue Growth from Consortium/Alliance
- Program ROI
- Percentage of Indirect Revenue
- Operational and Engagement KPIs: Calculated by the alliance based on input from collaboration participants.
- Partner Satisfaction Scores
- Training Completion Rates
- Portal Usage Rates
- Innovation and Impact KPIs: Calculated by the alliance based on input from collaboration participants.
- New Markets Entered
- Co-Developed Products/Services
- Milestone Adherence and Schedule Variance
Inventures Executive Directors and Program Managers, who serve technology alliances, can help implement processes to collect and track these KPIs. Note that the Inventures AQ (Accelerate Quality) Program is one mechanism for collecting information required for calculating some of the above KPIs.
In summary, by taking time to structure a collaboration of competitors properly and then monitoring the ongoing operations of the collaboration, participants greatly increase the probability of success, that is, achieving the mission of the organization and creating value for the member companies.
[1] Collaboration as Competition: Harnessing Ecosystem Thinking for Strategic Growth — https://siliconvalley.center/blog/collaboration-as-competition-harnessing-ecosystem-thinking-for-strategic-growth