How Digital Partnerships Drive Business Success

The digital partnership has emerged as the business model of the present—and future—as the majority of global executive leaders believe their organization will need to forge relationships with other companies to maximize the value of future technologies, according to a recent survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Telstra. The resulting report, "Connecting Companies: Strategic Partnerships for the Digital Age," notes that a significant share of these executives predict that organizations that decide to "go it alone" will eventually go out of business. The execs maintain that existing digital partnerships have positioned them to increase revenue substantially for the next year, enabling them to develop new customer segments, products and services. These initiatives are also helping them access new technologies, especially those related to big data/analytics, the cloud and mobility. "Digital technology is blurring the distinctions between companies and industries as we know them," according to the report. "Offline companies in older industries—those that came to the Internet later in life—are looking to develop digital capabilities by partnering with those that have perfected them. Native online companies, for their part, are learning to value the product and service expertise of offline firms as they attempt to turn rapid growth into mature, profitable and sustainable business models—or simply to survive." Nearly 1,045 global business leaders took part in the research.