Who orchestrates or facilitates this process of building out a Business Partner Ecosystem? Is it the lead company recognizing the value of building a more robust partner ecosystem or bringing in a specialized consultancy able to facilitate the significant amount of work this usually means?

It is not just about dedicated time but about experience, understanding, and recognition of all that can potentially change when exploiting ecosystems and being adaptive enough to respond.

There are typically two main approaches to orchestrating the process of building and managing a partner ecosystem:

1. Lead Company-Driven Approach: In this model, one central or “anchor” company takes the lead in orchestrating the partner ecosystem. This company often has a strong market position, an established brand, and significant resources. The lead company plays a pivotal role in:

• Defining the vision and goals for the ecosystem
• Identifying and recruiting potential partners
• Setting standards, guidelines, and governance structures
• Facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing
• Providing central platforms, tools, or infrastructure
• Managing partner relationships and conflict resolution

The lead company essentially becomes the orchestrator and primary driver of the ecosystem. Examples of companies that have successfully built partner ecosystems using this approach include Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, and Apple.

Still, they have had technology-led expertise, dominating positions and strong recognized and trusted processes that serve a multitude of customers and are looking to lead and shape the partner ecosystem in direction, rules and how it works. It is not a partnership of equals; these are one-sided platform providers.

2. Third-Party Facilitated Approach: In this model, an independent third-party consultant or specialized firm is brought in to facilitate the development and management of the partner ecosystem. This approach is often preferred when:

• No single company has a dominant market position or resources to lead and requires a central driving force to galvanize and catalyze this
• There is a need for a neutral, unbiased facilitator to work through the diversity and opinions
• The ecosystem involves multiple large companies or competitors that recognize the value of a neutral party.
• Specialized expertise in ecosystem design in options and choices, facilitation expertise of different management philosophies and visions that need recognition, challenging and then drawing out the diversity of ideas and knowledge to bring it into a powerful new market potential.

The third-party facilitator’s responsibilities typically include:

• Conducting ecosystem analysis and opportunity assessments
• Defining the ecosystem strategy, structure, and governance model for partner agreement
• Identifying and onboarding potential partners, assessing what they bring, desire and contribute
• Facilitating collaboration, communication, and conflict resolution as the neutral party
• Providing ecosystem management tools and platforms in options applicable to the emerging business case and value proposition
• Monitoring and measuring ecosystem performance and delivering the results to the partner consortium- both the good and bad news
• Adapting and evolving the ecosystem as needed through engagements with individual teams, building capabilities and competencies relevant to the roles and contributions.
• Often be the triggering mechanism for the mind shift this entails for undertaking and realizing the potential of collaborative ecosystems.

There are numerous partner ecosystem facilitation and management consultants to consider.

Following a recent post, Are you thinking of Partner Ecosystems? You should. Making the opening Business Case and deciding how this is managed becomes vital and the next point to consider.

These can include engaging with Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, EY but perhaps in the initial foundation stages it is worth looking at the more specialized consulting firms that are providing services to build out business and societal challenges as a proving ground to enable a more progressive approach to having Ecosystems as a sustaining part of the offerings.

I have been engaging with SIA Partners recently, for example. They are building up a good track record of building ecosystems, certainly in the UK presently. As a global mid-sized consulting organization expanding in offices and services at this time, they offer a different “feel” and association than some of the larger consulting practices, where technology often takes the lead irrespective, which may not be your preferred starting point.

Go it alone as the orchestrator, or seek out a neutral third party?

Both approaches have their advantages and drawbacks. The lead company approach leverages existing market power and resources but may face partner trust and buy-in challenges.

The third-party approach offers neutrality and specialized expertise but may lack a lead company’s deep industry and domain knowledge. This third party can be a consulting team or a specialist offering deep domain knowledge of ecosystems. My work qualifies for that choice of advising, mentoring and consulting in Ecosystem design and thinking!

Ultimately, the choice depends on factors such as the industry dynamics, the competitive landscape, the resources and capabilities of the companies involved, the specific goals and objectives of the ecosystem and most of all, the complexity and challenges that require a highly collaborative, shared approach to seize new market opportunities.

They can stay in your hands to manage at very different time, cost and resource commitments and what that means in your focus, or you bring in the third-party facilitator equipped to tackle the multiple tasks for you, to enable you to do what is best, focus on product/ market fit potentials that others like-minded, also see and recognize sharing and collaborating is the right way as a radically different way than building solutions on your own.

So partner ecosystems can be highly challenging; they include but certainly are not limited to:

1. Complexity in relationships, sharing, communicating and working with others in open ways
2. Dealing with internal resistance to change often makes it difficult to sell new solutions and approaches and manage them differently.
3. Costs radically change understanding and prediction, as much can be outside your control. You are reliant on others in the partner ecosystem to manage and be transparent about how these evolve.
4. Integration challenges can be challenging; different organizations have different systems and ways of measuring and working, and culture resolutions become increasingly important.
5. There is a lack of expertise in dealing with an equal partner arrangement; knowledge flows outside the one organization, reliance on the partners becomes increasingly important, and freely sharing and pooling expertise is radically different.
6. Security and IP concerns raise internal concerns, especially at the board or shareholder level and can become a significant inhibitor of building a partner ecosystem unless good governance, clear mutual visions, trust and common processes are well in place and managed actively.

Expertise and experience need to be built and fully understood in terms of implications, resolving barriers and obstacles, and recognizing the many resolution points needed to be faced in time to understand them and commit, often to many unknowns but adhering to the mission and vision.

Yet Partner Ecosystems hold promise in access to a broader range of resources and expertise, the ability to increase co-creation options in innovation solutions to tricky and complex problems. These are needing broader insights, offer growing scalability and speed once you have learned to leverage all the sources available  They can also offer more significant potential for sustainability and business, customer and social impact and these need clarity, resolution and resolve to keep in “clear line of sight” when you are caught in one of those “make and break moments” that occur.

Partner Ecosystems need robust orchestration and facilitation.