How to Find Cross-Industry Partners for Corporate Innovation

Warning: this post contains genuinely useful advice and almost no roulette wheels. We apologise for the lapse.

Most corporate innovation teams are good at running the partnership once it exists. The harder problem is the one before that: finding a partner worth running with, especially one outside the obvious adjacent industries.

This post sets out a repeatable way to do that, from generating candidates to deciding which ones deserve a real conversation.

Why the obvious partners are rarely the best ones

Left to their own devices, innovation teams pick partners from their existing network. That network is overwhelmingly same-industry: competitors, suppliers, and companies they meet at the same conferences. The result is incremental. Same-industry partners share the same customers, the same channels, and the same mental models, so the combined offering is a slightly better version of what already exists.

The partnerships that open genuinely new markets almost always combine non-overlapping assets: one company's data with another's distribution, one's brand trust with another's technology. That only happens when you deliberately look outside your own industry.

A four-step discovery method

1. Start from your strategic gaps, not from a partner wishlist

Write down what your organisation cannot do today: a capability you lack, an audience you cannot reach, a category you want to enter. Good partner discovery is a search for assets that close those gaps, not a search for logos you would like to be associated with.

2. Generate breadth deliberately

This is where most processes fail. Instead of brainstorming three plausible names, force volume: tens of candidates, drawn from industries unlike your own. Curated cross-industry databases help; so do generative tools that propose pairings on purpose. The Ecosystem Innovation Roulette was built for exactly this step: you feed in a company and it surfaces a cross-industry partner you would not have shortlisted, with a concrete proposal attached. (See a worked example or browse the gallery.)

3. Score quickly against the gaps

For each candidate, ask three fast questions: does it bring an asset we genuinely lack, is there a joint product we can describe in one sentence, and is there a plausible decision-maker who would take the call? Most candidates fail on at least one. That is the point of generating breadth: you can afford to discard most of them.

4. Pressure-test the survivors

For the handful that pass, do the real work: map the data or distribution architecture, identify the named sponsor on each side, and define the customer-facing moment that creates external accountability. Partnerships that stay purely strategic, with no concrete artefact, tend to quietly evaporate.

The mistakes that quietly kill good partnerships

• Narrowing too early. Picking the first plausible partner means you never see the better one two industries over.
• No joint product. "Let's explore synergies" is not a partnership. A specific co-branded launch, integration, or pilot is.
• No named owner. Without a decision-maker on both sides, the initiative belongs to no one and stalls.
• Confusing interest with fit. A pairing can be fascinating and still bring no complementary asset. Fascination is not a strategy.

Where to start

Pick one strategic gap, generate twenty cross-industry candidates against it this week, and score them in an afternoon. You will end with a shortlist that almost certainly includes at least one partner you would never have reached through your existing network.

If you want a fast way to generate that breadth, spin the roulette with one of your own portfolio companies, or book a short call to talk through the matches it surfaces.

The roulette will, naturally, claim full credit for any partnership this inspires.