Summary Chapter: Anatomy of the Successful Partnership

Producing profiles for the Model Partnerships Report presented an opportunity to interview numerous collaboration leaders to learn about their experiences and examine why they are successful. What qualities do successful partnerships have in common?  How do the partners keep the relationship productive and strong?  In what ways do successful partnerships confront the inevitable conflicts?

This summary chapter takes an even closer look at these questions, going beyond the Model Partnerships Report profiles to solicit additional views from some of the Boston area’s leading collaborators.  In this summary, you will find comments from Jeffrey Brancato, Associate Vice President for Economic Development at the University of Massachusetts; Jerry Cristoforo, Executive Vice President and Head of State Street Zhejiang Technology Company (mainland China) for State Street Corporation; Dr. Martha Gray, J.W. Kieckheyer Professor of Medical and Electrical Engineering with the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology; Reid Leonard, Executive Director of Licensing and External Research at Merck & Co., Inc.; Michael J. Page, Dean of Business and the McCallum Graduate School at Bentley University; Professor Mark Rice of the Babson College Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship; and Dr. Richard Tabors, Vice President of CRA International.  Mass Insight would like to thank them and all of our contributors for their help in making the Model Partnerships Report possible. 

The first and most fundamental question in examining partnerships may be simply why institutions partner at all.  Working with partners can be challenging and may not always feel natural.  What do people and institutions derive from working in collaboration that they could not achieve through similar solo efforts? 

As explained by Dean Michael Page, there are two fundamental reasons why institutions may seek to enter into a partnership: (1) to jointly leverage an existing resource or (2) to expand the universe of what each partner is capable of doing.  In the first instance, the partnership does not enable the partners to do something new, but simply allows them to do what one or both were already doing on a larger scale.  For example, partnering with a school in London may allow an American university to expand an executive education program to the UK without necessarily changing the content of what the program teaches.  In the second case, a biomedical research collaboration between research institutions with different fields of expertise may allow the partners to conduct higher-value research than either could do alone.  Page says that it is very important for both partners to understand from the beginning which type of partnership they are entering, as they come with very different expectations and obligations.

Among the collaborations examined for the Model Partnerships Report, it is clear that the second motivator was the most common.  Time and again, when asked to explain why they were interested in collaboration, the contributors cited the fresh, new perspective that comes from working with others.  In the words of Reid Leonard, “the biggest benefit of working in a partnership is having access to knowledge and assets that reside outside your own organization.”  As Dr. Richard Tabors put it, “get together different types of people who are interested in talking with each other and you’ll get something different that wouldn’t have come out of just the individuals.”

When Partnering Makes Sense: Considering the Value Added

Two heads aren’t always better than one, however, and in the words of Dr. Martha Gray, “you have to have a reason to work together—and it can’t just be that you enjoy working with others.”  Well-defined mutually-held objectives are key, and without them a partnership is doomed to failure.  Jeffery Brancato explained that, “the challenge in any partnership is answering the question of what we’re going to do together that makes sense for everyone involved.”

• Institutional Value
  While it is key for the partners to agree on the main goals of the collaboration, they need not agree as to what achieving those goals means to them.  For example, University A and Government B might enter into a collaboration to develop new clean energy sources.  For University A, this might be a means of achieving its institutional goal of becoming a recognized engineering leader, while Government B’s motivation might be to improve the health of its citizens.  This difference in motivation will not matter, however, so long as both partners are committed to accomplishing the agreed-upon goal.  “My partnership might mean something different to India than it does to MIT,” says Gray, “but if achieving the overall mission helps both parties to achieve goals that matter to them, then the partnership will be successful.”
• Value to Individuals
  Partnerships must also make sense for the individuals involved.  As Page said, “you can file as many formal agreements as you want, but if people don’t want to work together, it’s not going anywhere.”  As is the case at the institutional level, the partnership doesn’t have to have the same meaning to everyone so long as everyone has an opportunity to benefit in a way that is meaningful to them.  For example, an institution’s president may be excited about a talent collaboration’s potential to advance the institution’s international reputation, whereas faculty members might be more interested in learning new teaching methods from colleagues overseas.  As Brancato noted, this “doesn’t mean their interests are opposed.  It just means you have to find opportunities for everyone involved to get something that is of value to them.”  When a partnership is constructed with the interests of all parties in mind, the individuals involved can trust that, in the words of Gray, “the leadership isn’t giving away the store, and the collaboration isn’t going to be a waste of [the individuals’] time and resources.” Gray says it is essential for everyone, top to bottom, to believe that “working together is going to get them further than they would have gotten alone.” 

Laying the Groundwork for Success

Once it is decided that a partnership makes sense for both institutions and the individuals involved, there are a number of things that must be addressed at the outset.  During conversations with collaboration leaders, certain practical threshold elements were raised again and again.  Among them were:  developing a clear mission statement and specific objectives; securing funding; deciding what the partners will contribute in terms of financial and non-financial resources; agreeing on the duties to be performed by each party; setting a timetable for the accomplishment of (and a means for evaluating the success of) both short and long term goals; and, in the case of international partnerships, considering the impact the political structure and climate of each collaborator’s home government could have on the collaboration. 

Building the Relationship   

The overwhelming choice for the most important element of a successful collaboration, however, was a positive, trusting relationship between the partners.  As Gray stated, “trust is the most important thing to establish at the beginning, and it continually needs to be sustained and nurtured.” 

In the words of Tabors, “so much of the partnership’s success depends on trust and positive interpersonal relationships, it’s difficult to overstate.”  Sometimes partners enter into a relationship with these elements already established.  As Page explained, “over the years, you meet people in your field and develop relationships with them—you get to know who you trust and whose work you respect, and these are the people you almost naturally end up working with.”  It is not always possible, however, to find the resources an institution needs by looking within the known peer group, and so some partnerships must necessarily begin cold. 

Page describes the process of developing a solid relationship between collaborators in terms that are not dissimilar from building a successful personal relationship:  “Things go most smoothly if you are already friends before you become partners.  If you wish to build a partnership with someone you meet under different circumstances—someone you weren’t already friends with—you will need to put in a lot more effort.” Needing to make a greater effort doesn’t spell doom, however.  “Luckily,” Gray commented, “laying the groundwork takes time, so you can start to build your relationship before you actually have to start working together.”

Maintaining Relationships and the Importance of Communication

Whether a relationship is in its infancy or has survived the test of time, good communication between the partners is critical to future success.  Professor Mark Rice notes that you must “communicate fully in order to reach a clear mutual understanding at the outset, and then [you must] continue to communicate to ensure the partnership continues on track.”  Brancato explains that investing time in communication is especially important in an international collaboration:  “When there are cultural differences and geographic distance, one of the most important issues is having strong communication between the partners and really investing time and energy into that relationship.” 

• The Trouble with Distance
  While it is sometimes difficult to find time to communicate effectively with collaborators down the street, international collaborations obviously pose particular difficulty.  Leonard says “doing anything at a distance is more difficult, because you can’t spontaneously meet.”  This is all the more important when the inevitable problems arise.  Page says “it’s a lot easier to discuss problems with the guy down the hall than a partner who’s halfway around the world.”

Technology can provide a partial solution, but it is not perfect and comes with its own set of problems.  Leonard explains that, “when you’re relying on technology to bridge a great distance, the relationships have to be actively managed through a much more formal process of scheduled meetings and calls.”  And Page explains that having to schedule a call across times zones to discuss problems “overly formalizes the process and ups the tension.”  Furthermore, Gray notes that, despite the current state of telecommunications technology, speaking remotely can still “make it hard enough to understand someone’s actual words, much less the sometimes subtle meanings behind them.” 

The best communication, of course, happens face-to-face, and all the collaboration leaders interviewed agreed that, regardless of the distance that must be traveled, there is no substitute for meeting in real space.  As Gray put it, to build and maintain a strong relationship, “you have to be able to get together, look each other in the eye, shake hands, and have dinner.”  Page agrees that, “there is no substitute for being able to sit down, have a beer, and chat.  You don’t have to do it for everything, but you do need to come together occasionally to keep the relationship fresh.”   

• Working Across Cultures—at home and abroad: 
  Simply talking isn’t the only component of successful communication:  the partners must fundamentally understand each other, too.  As Brancato explains, “when working internationally, it’s essential to remember that your collaborators may see the world a little differently than you do and come into the partnership with different assumptions.”  Cultural considerations aren’t exclusive to international relationships, however, and many collaboration heads felt that cross-industry and cross-sector communications presented equal or greater challenges.  Brancato noted, “It can be much easier for universities to work with other universities than to work with an industry partner, because they understand the pressure points and obstacles to university work.”  Brancato further stressed that, regardless of whether cultural differences are regional or institutional in nature, investing the time and effort necessary to understand your partner is key:  “You have to appreciate that some things that are natural and instinctive in your home environment might not be for your partner.  Communication is the most important strategy for dealing with this—get to know one another, identify your own assumptions, and make sure those you are applying are valid in this particular case.”

Extinction or Evolution: The Fate of Partnerships Over Time

Partnerships are not always successful, however—despite the best intentions of the parties involved, partnerships often end in failure.  Jerry Cristoforo states that “most partnerships I’ve seen fail did so because the partners didn’t have a good idea to begin with, or they had a good idea and their timing was off.  A lack of trust, lack of communication, misunderstandings, different agendas, or an inability to operate as a unit because of self-interest are key reasons for failure.” 

Tabors expanded on the role greed can play in a partnership’s failure:  “It’s easy to agree to share everything in the beginning when nothing has been produced.  But when you start to develop things with commercial value and have to figure out who owns the IP, who has the right to develop it, et cetera, it can easily cause the partnership to collapse.”  Page adds that partnership demands working as equals: “If one partner is exploiting another, it’s not going to work.” 

Inflexibility can also bring about a partnership’s end.  For example, an R&D partnership that strictly dedicates a specific number of researchers to one aspect of a project can prove too rigid to survive.  As Leonard explains, “if the project stalls somehow, and not all the researchers have work, it is a tremendous waste of resources and very frustrating for the researchers, too.  There has to be enough flexibility to work through the complications that inevitably arise so that you have the freedom to go where the science is leading.”  Rice agrees it is critical that “the partnership adapts as necessary if reality unfolds differently from what was anticipated and planned for—and that all participants are satisfied with the adaptation.” 

Other times, partnerships do not end by failure, but in the words of Tabors, “because they’ve run their course and they need to end.”  A collaboration might end in success:  a partnership dedicated to ending a specific disease, for example, might come to a happy end when that disease is eradicated.  In such cases, a successful collaboration may choose another path: reworking its mission in order to apply its resources, hard-won trust, and positive relationships to a new, related challenge. 

CONCLUSION:

Working in a partnership can be a challenging endeavor, but with planning and dedication, the benefits can far outweigh the difficulties.  A partnership that is founded in pursuit of a common goal with meaningful opportunities for all participants; that is carefully planned; that has partners dedicated to building and maintaining a positive, trusting relationship through frequent and meaningful communication; and that is prepared to be flexible as the collaboration progresses can prove enormously beneficial for the institutions and individuals involved, the partners’ industries, their regional and national economies, and society as a whole.