PartnerHacker Weekend 12/03: Open vs. Closed Systems

A quick recap of the PhD from this week:

• It's a Two-Way Street
• Stay Curious
• Expand Into the Future
• Partnership Resilience
• Build Trust

Recently published:

• PartnerUp Pod - 085 - Integrating Partnerships Into Products: A Crosspod Takeover with Mark Brigman
• Howdy Partners #12: Making Partnerships = Sales with Aleksi Mattlar
• Building the Flywheel Starts with Your Partners by Gary Sabin
• Giving-to-Give vs Waiting-to-Get: the DNA of Partner Ecosystems and the Future of Business by Allan Adler
• PartnerHacker Principles by Isaac Morehouse and Aaron Olson
• Forrester Predicts Ecosystem to Replace Channel and More
• What You Need to Know Before You Start a Career in Partnerships by Eric Sangerma
• Cross-Departmental Buy-In: Weaving the Narrative of Ecosystems by Aaron Howerton

Happenings

• Dec 7 - Predictions 2023: Channel vs Ecosystem - Justin Zimmerman, Scott Brinker, and Jay McBain will meet up to discuss their partner predictions for 2023. Join them!

Open vs. Closed Systems

Data, automation, and funnels operate in a world of closed systems.

Closed systems are like machines. They have inputs and outputs. Think of a toaster oven. You put the bread in, and you get toast out. Simple.

It's fun to think about the world as a closed system because it is easy to understand.

But we no longer live in an era of closed systems. We live in the Era of Ecosystems.

An ecosystem is an open system. It has many paths to the destination we want to go.

Ecosystems emerge from the bottom up. There's no way to design them from the top down.

To win in the Era of Ecosystems, we need to stop thinking in terms of closed systems. We need to start thinking in terms of relationships, trust, and ecological diversity.