This book came alive through collaboration and partnerships
In 2019, we both started to gravitate towards the belief that true and trustful collaborations would be the engine for companies to find a new way of working. We saw the possibility and necessity of an alternative to the sky-bound curve, always hungry for growth, that has dictated business for the past century.
As we bounced ideas back and forth and connected thoughts to form grander viewpoints, we decided to co-author this book, proving our point that collaboration results in more than either of us could have achieved alone. As writing together is also about finding ways to merge two different writing styles, we decided to find a partner to help us write this story. Annelies Desmet agreed to become our ghostwriter. But instead of just writing down our ideas, Annelies quickly became a story-board, a challenger of our thoughts and the third voice in this narrative. Annelies became a true partner, and we want to thank her (and her colleague Jill) enormously for the amazing work they’ve done, and for taking this journey with us.
Our colleagues have been great story-partners in helping us with research, creating visuals and fine tuning the overall picture. Thanks a lot to Emily De Baets, Samuel Eggermont, Jeremy Denisty and Francesco Cilurzo. A special thanks to our business partner Jo Caudron for the reflections, thoughts and challenging conversations.
We would also like to thank our clients Jan Dewitte (CIO Unilin) and Dirk Oosterlinck (Group Director Business Development, Marketing & Innovation at Mensura) for being early believers and for challenging our first versions of partnership strategy.
Thanks also to Liesbeth Declercq, our publisher at die Keure, for the trust in our partnership and all the help in the creation of this new project together.
Last but not least, we want to thank the people we interviewed for sharing their insights on partnerships and ecosystems. Thank you for your collaboration and transparency. Your stories were inspirational and helped us to structure our ideas: Jonathan Berte (Founder Robovision), Osvald Bjelland (CEO Xynteo), Chris Burggraeve (Former CMO AB InBev), Sacha Buyck (Country Manager bol.com Belgium), Marco Derksen (Digital Strategist), Fredo De Smet (Curator, writer & DJ), Olaf Hermans (Cognitive scientist, PhD Penn State University), Carla Hilhorst (EVP R&D Foods & Refreshment at Unilever), Jurgen Ingels (Founding Partner SmartFin Capital), Rudy Moenaert (Professor of Strategic Marketing – TIAS), Saher Sidhom (Founder Hackmasters), Peter Somers (CEO Emirates Post), Stijn Swijns (Former Special Forces Operator and Founder of MissionMe) & P., Jacques Vandermeiren (CEO Port of Antwerp), Ann Van Dessel (SVP and Head Global Clinical and Regulatory Operations at Johnson & Johnson).