Quintijn Innikel talks about his experiences innovating through partnerships
“Making a modern consumer happy is not so easy anymore. The days of “you can choose any color as long as it’s black” are over, even for Apple. To win hearts, products are all-powerful. Think phones (what can’t they do?), cars (driving computers) or watches (measure my health, point the way and relay my mail). The demands this places on companies and their innovation teams are thus extremely high. Traditional carmakers realize that they must step up to three not to be outdone by Google or Tesla. Partnerships are a good weapon for going to war together.
With BEACON, I deal a lot with partnerships. We are often asked to look for the missing link. That may be missing knowledge or technology, but also a relevant brand or a sales channel. And that’s then where the exciting journey to collaboration between companies begins. What I love about it is that the people on our clients’ team are very open to collaboration. Together you indeed turn out to be able to do much more and 1+1 turns out to be 3. Still, it often remains exciting to work together. Like the division of roles. Who does what? Are you going to interfere with my product? Sharing also often proves to be a tricky but essential point.
Partnerships get off the ground best when the roles are clear and the interests of the partners are aligned. But here, too, those few people on the team often make the difference. Just because they are up for the challenge, enjoy understanding something about this other world or enjoy showing the world the next big thing with a Taiwanese, an Italian, a French belle and a dry Dutchman!”
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