Be open for having your own goals influenced by the goals of your partners!

Equipped with a good team and flanked by strong partners from your network, the resources must now be meaningfully combined to create the promised value for your customer. Research identified a clear pattern: Successful entrepreneurs know – consciously or unconsciously – what their personal assets are, something that everyone has at his disposal: their own identity, their competences and their network.

 

The Co-Creation effect

 

The co-creation effect utilizes two subsequent features in one. First, you combine the resources available in your team and network into a common resource inventory. Second, you allow for extended and/or additional goals to be created from this extended fund inventory, in particular from those aspects your partners bring to the table.

 

The collaboration with a partner can have a lasting impact on your goals, regardless of whether you approach him, or he finds you. The experiences and goals of the business partner throw very different light on the market and the needs of its customers. If you can help him to solve a core problem for his customer group, you will also get new impulses for your own business model.

 

For co-creation, partners can be utilized along the entire value chain. The first contacts may already result from bootstrapping, where you try to work creatively with your stakeholders to achieve as much as possible with your limited resources. Also, suppliers are often your first contact in the value chain and thus good partners for a win-win situation.

 

»We work together with selected innovative FinTechs and traditional providers worldwide. This allows us to work very customer-centric and to offer the best products via our app.« (Valentin Stalf, N26)

 

Co-Creation with your competition?

 

Many entrepreneurs are afraid to work with other companies. Their idea could eventually be stolen. But keep in mind: Ideas exist like sand by the sea. They are “the cheapest” in the entire startup process. Only the execution through a certain team creates value and thus factual protection in the market. So what about co-creating with your competition? The example of N26 shows that even co-creation between competitors, that is between FinTechs and established banks, can be successful.


Learn more about the thirteenth module “Co-Creation” of the Startup Navigator in the handbook.