The old saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”, resonates with me. Executing a quick innovation experiment in isolation. But to achieve great results and overcome the global challenges we face, we need to work together. Finding the right partners to work with and build up your ecosystem takes time. Sometimes the best bet is to work closely with your competitors; not for the faint of heart.
Having worked with smaller projects in isolation or building an ecosystem as part of the roadmap, I can advise best on how to operate. Fast, or far. You are safely isolated in a lab, or out in the real world cooperating with your competitors.
Ecosystem Challenges
The top reasons busy executives in the energy industry are facing difficulty implementing innovation within their companies are:
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Lack of understanding between technology-IT and business // Same language - perspective
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Uncomfortable Coopetition
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Ecosystem Thinking
Misunderstanding
When you work together on the same project, it helps to have the same, shared goal in mind. It helps to have a common language to describe what is happening. Too often good projects with even better intentions stall because of such misunderstandings.
Uncomfortable Coopetition
It can be hard enough to work with equal partners within the same supply chain. The challenge multiplies when you are going to cooperate with your competitors, hence the term ‘coopetition’. How much can you share with those that you also consider your competitors?
Ecosystem Thinking
Within an ecosystem, you have to look for the win-win propositions that benefit all stakeholders sufficiently. It takes time to get used to looking beyond your own business and consider the full ecosystem as a whole. How do you define such working relationships? What rules do you use? Who owns or decides on what?
