Partnering: A Natural Solution

The heat is on in sunny California where two public agencies are partnering with several private organizations to bring heat illness prevention information to California’s migrant education community. The partnership enables government agencies seeking to comply with California’s pioneering heat illness prevention regulations to reach migrant workers through a network of multi-lingual educational tools. Organizations in the agricultural community must ensure the health and safety of their workers; this partnership is working to train supervisors and employees in preventing, recognizing and dealing with heat-related illness.

Another public-private partnership seeking to educate people in the area of nature exists between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Nauticus. The partnership will build and launch of a weather-wise “smart” buoy in the Chesapeake Bay, monitoring and linking river conditions and weather data to an NOAA scientific database while linking some data to Nauticus’ educational on-shore kiosk for tourists. The buoy will serve to promote the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, the first water trail in the National Historic Trail System.

Water trails along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and two rivers in Indiana are the backdrop behind a private non-profit organization’s partnership with a public agency focused on protecting natural resources. Through a three-year plan and with the aid of private funding from at least two outside organizations, the partners will develop a widespread system to protect the land and improve recreation in the area.

Protecting the land is also the area of interest in a partnership between a private organization, a school district and a municipality in California. Converted Organics, Inc., producer of environmentally-friendly fertilizer, has partnered with the community to launch a recycling program that will enable the company to use public schools’ food waste to create fertilizer, which will then be applied to land on school and other municipal property. The partnership creates a win-win situation for all involved as Converted Organics gains natural food waste capital, the city benefits in the areas of landscaping and conservation, and the school district benefits from lower disposal fees while providing a valuable recycling lesson to its students.

In the interest of urban renewal and economic revitalization, a public/private partnership in Philadelphia is working to connect business and government districts for restoration of the tree-lined Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Approximately $17 million is needed to rehabilitate areas along the parkway. With funding from both government and private agencies, the partnership plans to restore the parkway to a grand boulevard worthy of Philadelphia’s historical status.

Have you noticed? Two are naturally better than one when it comes to meeting shared objectives. Both public agencies and private organizations, with their own primary agendas and underlying principles, often envision and create unique goals that simply can’t be met without each other’s cooperation and collaboration.

Noted:

• According to the government in Queensland, Australia, businesses in today’s global competitive market must organize their operations in new, more efficient ways to facilitate innovation and help people learn to work more effectively together. Collaboration is the foundation for innovation, notes the Business Council of Australia. It is promoting a voucher program to fund and enable more collaboration and research and development through businesses partnering with universities.
• A report on the effectiveness of collaborative relationships between private organizations and government agencies for responding with humanitarian assistance in disasters (including the earthquake in Pakistan and the tsunami in Indonesia) found room for improvement in such partnering efforts. The report recommended that the entities involved need to ensure a framework that will enable seamless communication and identification of priorities when responding to the disaster. (Source: Price, E. Owen; West, David F; Mancuso, James D. “The Emerging Role of Preventive Medicine in Health Diplomacy after the 2005 Earthquake in Pakistan.” Military Medicine. February 1, 2008.

Business Growth Strategy
How can you meet your business objectives in the face of budget and workforce or expertise constraints?  Two partnering entities in Alaska, the Tongass National Forest and Friends of the Tongass Cabins, have teamed up to meet the challenges presented by budget constraints and streamlined workforce. The unique, old cabins in America’s largest national forest have been deemed a national treasure but are in need of repair and maintenance. The two organizations have developed a program for maintaining the cabins and serving as a catalyst to bring together other groups that share an interest in maintaining them. 

Another example of a partnering arrangement created to meet the challenge of budget constraints exists between the Ben and Catherine Ivy Foundation of California and nine institutions working together on a project to research the correlation between genetics and brain tumors. The nine institutions will achieve synergy by sharing their research data. The Foundation uses the business strategy of collaboration to create synergy and efficient cooperation and is providing $3 million in funding, which until this partnering arrangement, has been unavailable for this area of brain tumor research.

Partnering is an ideal business model to gain access to the resources and expertise necessary to develop solutions for evolving business needs. An alliance of four companies in Hawaii are working together help Hawaii achieve its objective of being energy independent by 2030. The Hawaiian Electric Company, Maui Electric Company, HR BioPetroleum and Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. have partnered to provide clean, renewable energy through the development of a microalgae facility. Hi-tech firm HR BioPetroleum has developed techniques to scale production and achieve at least a 50 percent improvement over the price per barrel of fossil fuel today. Alexander & Baldwin will provide the land, and the Hawaiian electric companies will handle carbon dioxide-containing gases.

The FAA estimates the US air transportation system will reach gridlock by 2015. At least 15 public and private organizations are partnering to accelerate the development and implementation of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) to meet future demands and avoid gridlock in the sky and the nation’s airports. The Alliance for Sustainable Air Transportation (ASAT) includes the FAA, technology companies, universities and public and private organizations that are combining their resources and expertise to help accelerate time to market.

• In strategic planning for potential partnerships, people and organizations must be prepared, through a willingness to remain flexible and cooperative, for unexpected roadblocks. One such potential partnership between Banca Popolare dell'Emilia Romagna (BPER) in Italy and regional bank, Banca Marche, are studying opportunities to collaborate despite suspension of partnership plans due to unstable market conditions. BPER, despite setbacks, has remained flexible in its intentions to pursue future hopes of building a partnership with Banca Marche.

Wanted: R&D Partners

In partnering efforts in the news this week, we have a failure, a prizewinner, two involving geography, and one with a heart. 

When are partners not equal in contributing resources but still equally important in achieving the objectives? A 10-mile stretch of a Kansas highway corridor is the focus of a partnership to study how to generate more economic growth along the corridor and also make it safer. The partnership involves the Kansas Department of Transportation, the city of Topeka, the Metropolitan Topeka Planning Organization, and Shawnee County. Unlike the other partners, the county is not providing funding for the study; however, it has regulatory control of some of the area involved in the study.

Who owns the Arctic waterway known as the Northwest Passages? Canada believes it’s the owner, but the United States says it’s an international waterway (thus it would be a trade route allowing free passage). Though the two nations disagree on ownership, they’re partnering on a United Nations collaborative mapping project. Partnering will save both countries money and time in determining the waterway’s ownership.

What is the difference between a vision and a mission and strategic plan for partnership goals--and why does it matter? 21CTP, a research and development partnership between 15 US industrial partners and four federal government agencies, focused on fuel economy and emissions from with heavy-duty vehicles found out the hard way. A Department of Energy review found the partnership has failed to achieve its designated percentage goals and timeline for increased thermal engine efficiency and identifying fuel formulations to replace a percentage of petroleum fuels. The DOE review determined that the engineering or funding perspectives made the goals not plausible and in some cases the partnership didn’t utilize necessary technology to meet the goals.

What can we learn from elementary-school-age children when it comes to partnering? When they have goals they want to achieve, they partner with excellence. A partnership between a UK school and the University of Glamorgan achieved such outstanding outcomes in their objectives that they were awarded the annual Rolls Royce Science Prize. With help from the university, the kids studied a nearby river and then worked in the chemistry labs at the University to determine water quality. The Rolls Royce Prize will fund development of a “science deck” on the school grounds, where the children will be able to enjoy and study such features as environmentally powered musical instruments, digital weather indicators linked to classroom computers for predicting weather patterns, a wind turbine and solar power as sustainable energy, and a bird-friendly environment for studying life cycles and prey-predator relationships. 

The Partnering Surge
When speed counts, partnering is definitely an effective strategy for bringing products and services to market faster. That competitive edge helped influence Michigan’s governor’s decision regarding competitive proposals for a high-tech proton beam cancer radiation facility in the state of Michigan. Beaumont Hospital, ProCure Treatment Centers, is contributing $13 million, will attract other investors to fund the project. The governor wanted to avoid delays in bringing the technology to market and decided Beaumont’s proposed approach would succeed faster than the approach in a competing proposal from a consortium of six health care institutions.

The global economy is causing a surge in partnering arrangements to accomplish organizations’ visions and goals. It’s a proven model for quickly and efficiently expanding into new territories, as it breaks through virtual and physical boundaries.

Striking out for success in a new territory—secure data sharing—data specialist Avox Limited and Xinhua Finance, China’s top financial information provider, have formed a strategic alliance. The partnership will enable Chinese financial institutions to enhance the quality and availability of their own data in order to effect timely compliance and risk control at the institutions, which is a requirement of Basel II and other global standards regulations. It’s a win/win alliance, as Xinhua will be a “bridge” for Avox to expand its market share into China and Taiwan.

Four US states are partnering with Canada’s British Colunbia on energy and climate challenges in the in their Pacific Coast region.

Being the first to come up with solutions for new problems is a highly competitive activity, and many organizations are banking on partnering approaches as the best way to  achieve their objectives.

Drilling to do testing on underground sites to prove feasibility for underground storage of carbon dioxide is the joint objective of three energy companies, the Kentucky Geological Survey, and several private partners investing in the project. The feasibility project is key to the state’s future, as Kentucky’s high production of coal for more than 90 percent of the state’s electricity is a major contributor to carbon dioxide and global warming.

25x25 is not a measurement. It’s an alliance of 700 U.S. grassroots agricultural, forestry, conservation and environmental organizations collaborating on renewable energy initiatives. What could enable 700 groups to work jointly? How about a return on their efforts to the tune of four to five million new jobs and $700 in new economic development annually?

A wind company in Minneapolis is partnering with land owners in two counties on a community-owned partnering project to generate electricity to power 75,000 homes in the community. The land owners will participate in the development process. 

The University of Washington has developed WebAnywhere, a tool that reads Internet text aloud to blind people without their having to purchase or install any software on their computers. Now it is forming an alliance with technology nonprofit group Benetech to make the group’s 30,000 electronic books accessible to blind users over the Internet. 

If you think partnering with other people is challenging, check out this unique partnering approach: collaborating flying robots managed to transport a load without human intervention. Just think what collaborative robots communicating about ways to do various tasks together might do next—maybe your job?

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Kathleen Goolsby is a freelance writer and editor, specializing in partnering and outsourcing. Contact her at kathleen@partneringintelligence.com.