The document outlines a model for analyzing business opportunities by identifying and evaluating potential partners within a specific industry. It emphasizes the importance of categorizing partners, understanding their interactions, and constructing decision trees for effective partner selection. This structured approach aims to facilitate strategic partnerships that enhance company growth and sustainability through a robust ecosystem.

1. A simple and robust model to analyze
business opportunities in a particular
industry

2. • Strategy for a company can mean
a lot of things.
• Building links with partners can
help a company reach its goals in a
more efficient way (less time, less
costs)
• But there are a lot of potential
partners out there
• And understand who are the right
partners, and why they should
choose us in return, is not an easy
task.

3. 1. List of all the types of partners the company may
interact with and regroup them by function
2. Analyze what they bring to the company, what
the company bring to them, and what they bring
to the company’s clients
3. Analyze the interactions they have with the
other potential partners
4. Build a decision tree for each function to filter
the potential partners

4. • Listing seems easy, but it is the most
important part of the model. You have to list
any type of partners that can interact with the
company
• For example: physical stores, digital magazine,
ads agency, supplier, government, NGO etc…
• No need for names, just types

5. • For each type you have to build a simple tab
• This exercise will help you understand how to
interact with this type of partners and what
type of communication you will need to build.
• If the company is a platform, you need to add
a fourth column to accommodate the 2 types
of clients.

6. • This is a complicated exercise but it
will help the company build a
robust ecosystem.
• For each type of partners, try to
understand how they interact with
other partners i.e. what they are
interested in other partners
• Then take some time to think
about the network effects: is this
partner happy to see similar
partners interacting with you? Is he
interested by the number of clients
you have? Etc…
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7. • You should be able to build a
decision tree for functions, but if
it’s too complicated, you can build
a decision tree for specific partner
types.
• Decision tree should start with a
general question, and only have
yes or no answer. You can refine
with as many following questions,
but it is important to keep it
simple, as it will help you filter the
amount of potential partners.
No
Direct link with
industry?
Interested to
act in this
industry?
No
Already use similar
product?
Yes
Match clients’
target?
Yes
Yes
Have already agreement
with competitor?
Interested to
enter market?
No
No
Yes
Yes
No
Interested by
more?
No
YesYes
No
Give access to
other segments?
No Yes

8. • Now that you are done with the framework,
you have to list the actual partners
• You can do that yourself or outsource it as it
can be a fastidious job.
• Then you use your decision tree to filter the
partners. This should help you reduce the list
to an acceptable number.

9. • After this work, it could be interesting to have
a time line to contact or activate these
partners according to the priority defined by
your new framework
• This may be part of another presentation

10. Conclusion
• It is not impossible to plan a strategic network of
partners.
• Building this network will require to use personal
connections, called call, communication etc…
different weapons to choose carefully
• This network of partners will help the company in
activating their customers
• but most importantly it will sustain the growth of
the company as it builds credibility and make the
company essential for the new partners