Strategic Alliance Magazine Q1 2021 - 31

ECOSYSTEM MYTHS

ecosystem flourish. This failure can be the result of lacking the
common unifying North Star vision that attracts partners to
your ecosystem. Or perhaps it is a compelling profit model for
your partners that may be lacking. As in all partnerships, you
must craft a three-way value proposition:
1. How does your ecosystem benefit your mutual customers?
2. How does it create value and an attractive economic
business model for your potential partners?
3. How do you, as the orchestrator, enhance and grow your
business through your ecosystem?
Instacart has an ecosystem-centric business model and saw its
value proposition become especially compelling during the
pandemic. It might seem superficially that Instacart was operating in a Field of Dreams; however, its success was enabled
through a powerful value proposition.
Instacart provides an online grocery shopping platform. Its
ecosystem of grocers and retailers enables people to shop their
favorite stores and brands with same-day delivery. Instacart
has had remarkable growth in the pandemic as its customer
value proposition moved from one of consumer convenience
to one of safety and even lifesaving.

This is not the Field of Dreams, and the
first few partners must be recruited
the old-fashioned way: through
personal relationship selling, with a
strong partner value proposition.
Grocers, Instacart's ecosystem partners, also saw their value
proposition increase. Prior to the pandemic Instacart enabled
them to provide a convenience to their customers. During
the pandemic, the value to grocers was approaching a survival strategy. Grocers were at a competitive disadvantage if
they could not provide customers with a shop-from-home
option, especially those that had not yet developed their own
ecommerce and delivery capabilities. This greatly increased
Instacart's value and attracted more grocers and retailers into
its ecosystem. The time-to-market acceleration was a critical
component of the value prop. Instacart profited from having
the right solution during a crisis and an ecosystem business
model that enabled it to rapidly scale to meet demand.

old-fashioned way: lots of personal relationship selling, with
a strong partner value proposition. Often these first partners
are not the dominant leaders in your industry. They will be the
second- or third-tier challengers. These partners are looking
for an edge in the market: they're early adopters, often innovators, and they're looking for new ways to serve customers that
will set them apart. Can you provide them with that?
Once you have a few innovative challengers on board, then
something interesting can happen. The challengers start
making headway, landing high-profile customers, and taking
business away from the established leaders. Then you hit a
tipping point. The industry takes notice. The leaders are now
coming to you, and once you have a few of those big marquee
names on your platform, you get swarmed. Everyone is checking you out and the ecosystem grows more organically, more
spontaneously.

Myth #3: I Can Make Money
off My Partners
Yes, you can. But if this is your only focus, you won't for long.
Working with partners requires a fundamental mindset that
seeks value-creating outcomes: the win/win for all members.
If you are not thinking in this mode, you will sabotage your
efforts. All partnerships, and perhaps especially those that are
ecosystem oriented, rely on trust versus control. If partners
perceive that this is a purely transactional relationship, then
very little investment will go into creating value. If they trust

Benefits for Your Customers

Value for

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Your Partn

Growth for Yo

ur Business

So how do you get the word out? Where do you start? Having
built partner ecosystems and communities from scratch, I
have found that the first couple of partners are recruited the

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Strategic Alliance Magazine Q1 2021

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