“There’s no such thing as Society,” said Margaret Thatcher — and yet, we remain social beings who coexist, who build bonds, alliances… and who work together. Usually not even just with other human beings, but also with other living beings, with technologies and institutions.
The question of how to define what we call “society” — let’s say, of “reassembling the social” 😉 — I’ll leave for later. Today I want to focus on what we call “stakeholders” (“interested parties”, “agents”, “actors”… however we want to translate it). And on alliances and strategic relationships.
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How RELATIONSHIPS allow you to achieve the impact you want
A group of students in my “Innovation & Design” course at UPV, among other proposals to develop a solution (based on a “Product-Service” model) to their challenge around packaging waste, proposed a packaging standardisation system to encourage its return and reuse. Ambitious. But I had to tell them: “you don’t achieve that by building a company around a product-service, you achieve that by lobbying” — “good” lobbying, if we can allow ourselves to put a moral category on that act of applying pressure.
How are you, as a company, going to offer a “standardised” product if there are no regulations saying it must be standardised and if the rest of the companies in your sector aren’t standardising theirs? What I wanted to show them is that some issues are collective. And that led me to explain how I had decided to become part of the Sustainability Cluster of the Valencian Community – SECMACV, a collective project at a territorial level.
Perhaps, one example of “good lobbying” are the Design Associations across Spain, affiliated with READ (Red Española de Asociaciones de Diseño), through which many improvements for the sector have been achieved (e.g. in terms of reducing speculative hiring practices). And which, of course, could never have been achieved from a design agency or studio working in isolation.
But beyond clusters and associations, there are many examples of projects and companies that are living proof that, without alliances, you don’t function, you don’t survive, you don’t create impact. Take CDTM – Center for Digital Technology and Management, an innovation programme I’m involved in managing. CDTM is actually an inter-university programme with over 25 years of experience in Munich, where it operates as a joint venture between the two strongest public universities in the city: TUM and LMU. Three years ago it arrived in Valencia alongside UPV and UV. Above all, CDTM is a node of alliances: these universities, the local and regional public institutions that fund and support it, the companies that collaborate as project partners, other innovation ecosystem entities such as Startup Valencia or the Parc Tecnològic… You could say it’s a fairly complex piece of stakeholder management.
What about SMEs? Establishing, developing and/or leveraging the right alliances has made projects like EVERMUTE by ABSOTEC — whose design we were part of —, the new GERMANETS brand from FILCOR, or the well-known example of FAIRPHONE (and its alliance with iFixit) a reality.
Building ALLIANCES methodologically
The concept of “stakeholders”… if you work in sustainability, or even in business strategy in general, you surely know it. Many people talk about the need to transition from “shareholder capitalism” to “stakeholder capitalism”. It’s the principle underpinning the BCorp movement, GRI standards and many other advances, regulations and theories around Sustainability. That’s why I like to use the tool called “Stakeholder Map“, which is nothing more than a visual representation of our entire ecosystem: competitors, clients, collaborators, suppliers, public sector, media, research institutions, associations, shareholders, the natural environment itself… all those entities and organisations, people, living beings, that are or could be involved in some way in our activity. Some, in a very clear and direct way (to our clients, we offer our product/service), but others in less visible ways (onto our natural environment we deposit waste that affects it, but it also provides us with key resources for our business activity and our lives). We like to start from this analysis, exploring all the interrelationships in the system, to identify which possible alliances make sense for us, which ones we already have underway, what might be working and what might not.
Beyond the tool itself, here are some keys and learnings from the various processes and projects I’ve been part of:
⚪️ Alliances are not “cold” contacts, they are commitments. They are built on agreements, mutual trust and ongoing follow-through. They require intention and dedication. Ultimately, they are “relationships”.
⚪️ Relationships are not forced, they are cultivated. It’s not about “convincing” someone to join your project — well, yes, sometimes that too — but about exploring together whether it makes sense to walk the same path. And that means having conversations, understanding interests and making space for the unexpected.
⚪️ Nurture the bond, even when there’s no project. Many of the most solid alliances emerge from relationships that have been tended over time, without urgency or immediate goals. A conversation, a small collaboration or a shared interest today can become a great opportunity tomorrow. I always use as an example some of the projects I’ve carried out alongside various entities, in cooperation, under public funding calls (for example, funds from the GVA). By the time the right call comes out and we have a project formulated from within the consortium in question, months — and sometimes years — of conversations, of working together on other projects, of maintaining a relationship, have already gone by.
⚪️ Share the purpose and the vision, not the task. The alliances that truly thrive don’t revolve solely around operational objectives, but around shared visions of transformation. Why are we working together? What do we want to change? That is the most strategic conversation. And, of course, it has everything to do with that purpose we talked about previously.
⚪️ Prototype! Test what works, explore, iterate, change if necessary. Some alliances reach their natural end, others need to be reformulated, and new ones need to be born. Don’t idealise or cling on: stay honest about the life cycles of each relationship. Without ever stopping caring for them, of course.
💫 And you — who do you relate to? How? Under what values or criteria? If you want to keep contributing to the conversation and participating in the community, you can find us in Substack.