How do you align partnership innovation with core business functions?

Depending on the kind of business you have, you will want to identify your internal business goals for developing partnerships. For B2B tech companies for example, you could have tech partnerships, channel partnerships, referral partnerships etc. Ensure that your partnership goals are aligned with the resources you have at hand. If you are a business that relies heavily on technical integrations then you will want to partner deeply with your internal technical and product teams. If your focus is generating marketing leads, then your internal marketing team will need to support you all the way. Before embarking on an external partnership, secure buy-in from internal functions that are essential to the success of external partnerships.

In my experience, creating an objective goal is often the most difficult part of forming a collaborative proposal. Goal-setting should be pragmatic if a long-term collaboration is the shared objective. Goals often form pillars or milestones that are easily lifted out to evaluate the success of the collaboration. One particular difficulty is that it's easy for one side to set unachievable high demands or unrealistic expectations, especially in early-stage technical projects. On the other hand, poor goal-setting contributes to difficulty when later reviewing the success of the partnership. I vouch for identifying and quantifying goals regardless of the nature of the partnership, in order to measure both progress and success.

Be very clear about the goal of your partnership and what you want out of it. Across metrics like new products, customers, revenue streams, and improved efficiencies. These targets should tie directly to current strategic priorities and gaps. For example, a retailer partnering with an AI firm established joint success metrics around utilizing machine learning to optimize supply chain logistics. This aligned tightly with operations functions.

Involve relevant internal stakeholders, across business units like marketing, product, sales, and tech teams, to provide input and buy-in during partnership planning. Maintain transparency on progress through consistent check-ins once launched. Open communication channels allow quick pivots if initial directions show less promise. I’ve seen global partnerships falter when regional teams were brought in late without context. Early alignment prevents this.

Adopting an experimental, test-and-learn mindset is critical, especially for disruptive innovation initiatives. Rather than rigid long-term roadmaps, take an agile approach with iterative testing cycles and minimum viable products to uncover what resonates in the market. One partnership built multiple localized versions of an onboarding app to gauge differing customer needs. Rapid experimentation led them to global solution.

Make sure deal structures fairly share upside as well as downside risk. This ensures continued engagement from both parties. Consider non-financial value in addition to economic value – like access to data, new customer segments, branding halo effects and more. A mutually aligned partnership I know weathered setbacks because both sides participated equally in financing and risks.

Put appropriate incentives in place internally to encourage openness to partnership models as a core way of innovating and delivering customer value. Streamline contracting processes so they support pace of business. And promote cultures that reinforce sharing, learning and responsibility across organizational boundaries. With deliberate cross-functional involvement, clear goals, flexibility to learn, and shared risks and rewards, companies can leverage partnerships to accelerate innovation while keeping it tied to the core.