Channel partners: what does it take to succeed?

Abstract

Background: To react to market changes, companies are increasingly opening up their innovation processes and attracting external partners. We can see an increasing number of formed partnerships between businesses. Since the ability to win the market often depends on forming successful channel partners, many firms do not succeed in ensuring the longevity and success of the cooperations. Companies often struggle in leveraging and operationalizing partnerships in commercializing the innovation. It is not often easy for businesses to provide the necessary resources to disseminate the innovation with channel partners. The main focus of this study is to explore how channel partners can help organizations scale their innovation and how organizations can operationalize their partnerships. Objective: The main objective of this thesis is to understand and explore the nature of channel partnership formation and enablement. The aim is to analyze the factors behind building successful channel partners and explore how to enable them in this process. Methods: This study employs single case analyses that use semi-structured interviews. In order to study the research question and objectives, an explorative study approach is chosen for this paper. Results: The role of partners in commercializing the product is crucial, and it is often difficult to succeed without a set of structure and processes. The results from this study show that there are three core factors in building successful channel partners: (1) selection of partners, (2) building a partner relationship and (3) enablement of partners. Major success indicators are identified within the above-given categories as part of answering the research objectives.