November 28, 2017 by Todd Rosholt

Identifying and Managing Key Partnerships

Joining forces with other companies for mutual benefit

In today’s everything is connected world, no company in the live event industry can or should do everything alone. Partnership innovations provide a way for individuals, teams and organizations to take advantage of other companies, processes, technologies, business models, communities, and brands – pretty much any and every component of a business.

These innovations mean a company can capitalize on its own strengths while harnessing the capabilities and assets of others. Partnership innovations also help to de-risk new offerings and ventures. These collaborations can be brief or enduring, and they can be formed between close allies or even staunch competitors.

What makes a great partnership?

On this episode of The Big Top, we will discuss what brings together the smartest teams of the best companies, to combine their efforts to create new offerings, projects and sustainable value.

We believe, it is achieved through collaboration, co-creation, coordination, and the combination of capabilities. And, there needs to be more of this activity because the combination of technologies, applications or services increase a solution’s value.

Prioritizing value-creating partnerships

Identifying and managing three key value drivers can help leaders focus their attention on activities that will have the greatest impact on value creation:

Growth Drivers invest in value-creating growth opportunities. (We LOVE playing here)
Efficiency Drivers invest in operating efficiency OR divest in value-destroying activities.
Financial Drivers reduce capital costs.

We find that most organizers manage their event business as if every operating factor were equally important. Most planners have a solid knowledge of the variables that impact event performance and they manage that list aggressively. The problem is that the list is often too long and maybe prioritized against goals other than value creation.

Without a clear sense of what “true” value drivers are, clear strategic choices get cloudy.

Develop an Opportunity Dashboard

To better understand where your company’s value drivers lie, you must first break down the broad operating parameters of the event business into progressively smaller components until you reach the level where daily operating management decisions reside. That’s why we created the Value Assessment (Beta) and supporting Opportunity Dashboard.

These tools can help you document which specific factors influence value creation internally and externally.

Why this is important

The capacity to collaborate is a decisive factor in identifying and managing key partnerships. However, It is not a straightforward way, because in most cases it hasn’t been drawn yet. For this reason, we want to open a conversation about partnerships who have already taken the first steps to value creation.

About Us

The mission of The Big Top is to shorten the path to wisdom by connecting like-minded people. You must learn from those who have already completed the mazes you are interested in pursuing. If you don’t, you are wasting a lot of time and effort. We are making that journey a little easier, less expensive and faster for you.

To learn more, or to join the conversation, please visit tentpole.events

Thanks for being open. The future is.