Mutualism, Pollination and Growth

With spring finally showing itself here, the forest is alive with bugs, birds, flowers, and animals.  Though I often take it for granted, some of the most amazing things are the relationships they have with each other.  They are predator-prey, competitors, or for lack of a better word – cooperators. This last category has lots of feel-good stories such as pollination, fungal generation of nutrients, and seed dispersal.  With cooperation both parties derive benefits from this relationship that biologists call mutualism.

In a similar vein, I was at a tradeshow in Boston this week, and I was struck at how the various vendors’ products and services were so complementary to each other.  Granted there were the furtive glances as competitors assessed the activity across the aisle, but overall most companies seemed to be covering different segments of the market.  There was almost a sense of camaraderie as they pitched their wares.  Maybe it was the low level of funded prospects, but it was a fairly civil affair.

After chatting with many of the vendors, I could see that there were numerous opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation between them.  It seemed obvious to me that the fellow with the fast data transfer would benefit from cooperation with the cloud storage folks since both deal in large data sets.  Similarly, the image sharing people could leverage the cloud storage system as well as the fast file transfer.  And all the analytical offerings could take advantage of the infrastructure products.  The bottom line is that they are all attacking different pieces of the same or related problems.

So why don’t they shake hands, cooperate on providing solutions to customers, and all benefit from this clear mutualism?  There are several reasons why this doesn’t happen, some intentional, and some by ignorance.

• Ego – I often see smart people deciding they can build the widget themselves even though the company in the next aisle could readily supply it tomorrow.  Sure it’s nice to own it all, but getting to market months sooner should trump this.

• Lack of awareness – Frequently the folks running these companies are at full capacity just keeping the train on the track.  They don’t see these opportunities since they are only staring through the windshield and not gazing around them.

• Not enough people – Often companies see how partnering with Joe’s Automation Company would shorten their time to market, but they just don’t have the people to build the relationship, manage the process, and capitalize on the additional opportunities.

So what can they do to take advantgage of these new avenues to grow their companies?  The first step would be swallow some pride and deflate some ego.  Acknowledge that they can actually grow through partnerships and cooperation, not only by constructing new products and services themselves.  Secondly this “strategic intent” needs to be clearly stated to all the people in the company, not just implied that it would be nice to do.  With this as a goal, everyone in the company can then filter what they see in terms of how it could help them and how it fits with their own products and services.  All these eyes and ears would flush out the possible partners for cooperation.

Finally cooperation needs people to make it happen.  Planting seeds only yields a harvest when the fields are tended.  With the current employment situation, there is a lot of talent on the sidelines waiting to run with the ball.  Outside help can fill the gap until the new sales fuel the addition of more people to the organization.

So try some mutualism.  Partnering with the people across the aisle can be quite beneficial to both of you.  All you have to lose is an empty pipeline and long development cycles.