By Dado Van Peteghem

Partnerships and collaboration have been a constant throughout my career. My very first job was to manage a project called Future Talking: an online research community with more than 1,000 Belgian citizens who were invited to exchange ideas on the future of our society. It was a multi-client study involving ten different companies, led by a partnership between InSites Consulting – the company I was working for – and One Agency, an innovative web agency led by Jo Caudron, who would later on become my compagnon de route.

From this first experience in 2007, I learned how valuable complementary partnerships can be, and how powerful their combined networks are. Five years later, I ran into Jo again at a market research event. We picked up the conversation right where we’d left off and went on to find our current company. Then and there, serendipity and trust were already at the heart of our decisions.

Two years into our collaboration, Jo and I wrote one of the first books on digital transformation, a story which brought me to Dubai. I was asked for a keynote speech by the Chalhoub Group, one of the leading luxury companies of the Middle East. We started a project together which ended in a partnership and a joint venture. Thanks to the Chalhoub Group and their extended family, I grew to understand how trust and respect are quintessential to success. Many of the collaborations in the Chalhoub Group have crossed three generations, illustrating the long-term mindset that is needed for true trustful partnerships.

Later still, I teamed up with Omar Mohout to write a book on corporate venturing and how large corporations can accelerate growth by collaborating with startups. We described the power of collaboration between the big motherships and speedboats to foster innovation and agility. We used the metaphor of the connected fleet, where the mothership works with the surrounding speedboats to make their way to the same North Star.

Working with Nils now, we started to see the potential of a ‘fleet of fleets’, one in which big players don’t just work with smaller ventures, but where giants also partner up to create much more leverage together. Not just commercially, but to work towards a shared purpose.

It is my true belief that large-scale companies won’t be able to survive on their own in this challenging century. This fast-turning world is just too complex to navigate by yourself. Companies need to connect, to engage with the community, to immerse themselves in the rising ecosystems, to reach out for collective intelligence and innovation and – above all – to scout for ‘partners in purpose’.

In early 2020, I was invited to speak at the University of Vilnius, a city whose people left a long-lasting impression on me. After my keynote, there was a panel conversation with, among others, Saher Sidhom, who runs an innovation business from London. “I’m not building a company,” he told me. “I’m building a network.” Moving forward, I think this should be the mindset, both for individuals and for companies. Your most valuable asset in business is your network. Invest in it so you can unleash its power when you need it the most.

Like Steve Blank told the startup world: get out of the building! Let’s connect. After all, the future is something we’ll have to build together.