Imagine new or unexpected partnerships that strengthen your value chain, increase system effectiveness or make a more robust business case. This will also help to achieve alignment and clarity on how to move forward together.
Following initial prototyping, new opportunities may appear to broaden your sphere of influence within the wider system in which you’re operating. This may uncover a need to partner with new or unexpected organisations.
Steps
Step 1
You may have already identified potential partners during the Business Model Canvas, but given what you’ve learned during user-research and prototyping, what type of new organisations could help inspire your product or service?
Step 2
Ask – what new emerging opportunities have come up while you’ve been developing your concept? Who would you need to talk too to understand how these might be incorporated? (e.g. embedding tech)
Step 3
Use the brainstorming method to help you think of more unexpected partnerships that could make your value chain more effective/efficient.
Step 4
Once you have identified partners, here is some preparation for the conversation with a potential new partner:
Develop a narrative or a point of view that will help the new partner understand the value to them and the system.
During the conversation:
What commitments would be needed from either side to make things a reality (minimum viable release) and to mitigate risk?
Develop some 'ground rules' on prototyping the new partnership together –
e.g. who will gain from new business opportunities it may create?
Set parameters for making collaboration a success – what will you measure to know whether the partnership is worth pursuing?
Circular Design Guide
This page is part of the Circular Design Guide. Get an overview of the project, or dive straight into our activities to help you understand, define, make, and release circular innovations.
