3.3

Looking ahead:

Which alliances will advance your project?

Once you have proven that your idea works, this is when you really get down to business. Your task now is to anchor your idea over the long term. After all, it is only if the shift in behaviour remains stable that it will contribute to the desired change. If your idea works, it likely challenges the system. Larger providers, for example, who offer something similar but do not have such a good solution. Jobs, sales and influence may perhaps depend on it. Progress is usually met with resistance. You will not only win friends with good solutions. This is why you are faced with the task of forming significant alliances in good time, including with uncomfortable partners. The key question: who needs to be part of the success so that your idea can be taken up by as many people as possible?

Example VillageOffice

VillageOffice has also undergone great change since its launch. It now faces its biggest step, however. The founders want to hand over the established service offering to new sponsors and, at the same time, open the way for the further development of their original vision with new partners.

When the ?co-working experience? failed to attract enough demand, the pioneering project quickly changed course and identified a new key target group in the form of municipalities.

VillageOffice has since grown from 30 to 80 spaces, with the awareness level of the initiative growing at the same time.

1. The consulting offer for the municipalities is mature and now works on a modular and very efficient basis. It can therefore be passed on and continued as a model, irrespective of the founders. But who are the best sponsors?

2. The original idea behind the ?co-working experience? gained in significance once more due to the coronavirus crisis. Enriched by all the experience gained in the meantime and in partnership with a technology company, it is thus currently being tackled anew.

How it works

Consider at an early stage how you would like to keep your offer alive over the long term. This also includes gaining an overview of comparable initiatives and offers while refining this on an ongoing basis.

More of a cat or a fox? Be clear whether you are patient innovators or impatient rebels. A rebel flies under the radar for as long as possible and initially seeks its niche on the market – like a fox that claims its territory for itself. An innovator goes on the offensive and seeks dialogue with possible competitors at an early stage – like a cat that cosies up to every leg.

The strategy for foxes: Win as many customers as possible, as quickly as possible. And do so without being noticed if you can.

Some strategies for cats: You have the solution, but who has promising market access?

Define the players that you can?t ignore. Get those who know better on board at an early stage and make them comrades-in-arms before their backs are against the wall.

Invite ten people to your results presentation who will sit up and take notice when they see what you have done.

Create empathy for your solution.

Trick

Ride every wave of success to forge new alliances.

Even if you are successful, the wave of success will be much too small for you to ride it alone over the long term. A successful model project often overestimates its own impact. Outside of its own target group, it is often not even known. With every success you achieve, you

should therefore widen your radius.

The wave of success:

with this exercise, you prepare yourselves to not rest on your laurels, but instead, to ride the wave of success.

Wave of success (PDF)