Converging over Coffee - Courting Collaboration (5/5)
Tackling ecosystem collaboration opportunities & obstacles is a complex and challenging job. Even after we have developed the necessary insights into how systems & stakeholders work or don’t want to work, it can be exhausting work breaking down barrier after barrier. Where do we find the motivation to keep at it?
Looking to other sectors & industries has always been my favorite source of inspiration. It fascinates me when I see a great solution or methodology from another industry that could be a breakthrough for a problem we’re stuck with in ours. The applications will be different and adaptation / customization to our conditions will be necessary, but surely we’re experienced enough to figure that out. The real obstacle seems to be our reluctance to acknowledge that someone from another industry could tell us how to do our jobs. So we come up with a list of logical reasons why not and we continue to speak to like-minded people.
It’s important to be grounded on the unique circumstances and realities of our industry ecosystem, particularly to drive performance, delivery certainty and to solve immediate problems. But for longer term, more complex and more stubborn problems - like the challenge of our times of achieving a sustainable low-carbon future, it really pays to listen hard to the work of others from different industries and engage with the empathy & curiosity needed to co-create the solutions the world needs.
