We have had a great discussion with Claus Cramer-Petersen, PhD, Digital Health Project Manager at Dawn Health about how to make partnerships successful.
How do you ensure vision alignment in partnership projects?
Vision alignment is a key challenge for collaboration projects. You have to be careful to not just find an agreement on a high level formulation, but be aware that short-term goals can differ a lot between partners and every party follow his or her own goals. It should be also clear, what every party can contribute to the projects in terms of skills and resources and what benefits can be retrieved.
How do you track the success of your partnership?
Tracking the success during the process is not an easy task. Many public funded projects require a lot of formal reports and plans before they start to work. This is a good point of time to ensure that every partner dedicates a certain number of resources (employees, money, skills) only for the partnership project. However, the tricky part is retaining a common focus and finding ways to re-adjust the purpose of a partnership over the course of time – something that requires active alignment in pre-defined partnerships where e.g. funding has been granted up front.
What are potential risks for partnerships?
A good planning beforehand can minimize the risks of failure. Be clear about the stakeholder ecosystem around your project. Does it fit to all legal or regulatory requirements? How much time do we need to build a certain software? Do we got the right people to face all possible barriers? Again, be clear about the motivations of your partner and communicate differences in a regular manner to leverage each other as much as possible
Thank you Claus