4 Key Criteria for Enduring Partnerships

Nature knows how to build mutualism.

Last October I had the privilege of leading small discussion groups around the “4 Key Criteria for Enduring Partnerships.” This content was researched and crafted by Toby Herzlich (of Biomimicry for Social Innovation) and Dayna Baumeister (of Biomimicry 3.8) looking at deep patterns across the kingdoms of life.

They found many relationships (symbiosis), but enduring partnerships were only a subset of all those relationships — known as mutualism.

Symbiotic Relationships

• Parasitism – Parasites and Hosts

• Predation – Predator and Prey

• Herbivory – Herbivore and Plant

• Commensalism – one organism benefits while the other is neither positively nor negatively impacted (mutualism we’ve yet to discover)

• Co-Existence – neither organism is positively nor negatively impacted (live in the same environment but don’t really interact)

• Competition – both organisms are negatively impacted (cost to both organisms, only occurs when resources are limited)

  • Won’t stay in competition long – they’ll need to differentiate their niches to shift what, where, how, and when they access resources

  • Adaptive Radiation – when a single species will fan out its adaptations/traits into multi-species to find new niches

• Mutualism – both organisms are benefited so both invest in making the relationship work

If you’re in the Pasadena, California (Los Angeles) area, I hope you’ll consider joining us on May 31st from 7-9 pm at “Exploring the Mycoverse” as we discuss the 4 Key Criteria of Enduring Partnerships and how we can leverage these patterns to learn more about our personal relationships.

4 Key Criteria for Enduring Partnerships

1. Must be a net benefit for each party which fosters a reinforcing feedback loop.

   1. What are the net benefits for each of you?

   2. What are the reinforcing feedback loops you help each other manage?

2. The value exchange is of different resources or services.

   1. What are the different resources or services that you provide to each other?

3. The benefit (of services or resources) is something that each partner can readily provide to the other.

   1. Me being me, and you being you is enough, but we must both be ready for each other.

   2. It must be the right time for both of us.

4. Partners respond and adapt, both to each other and to the changing contexts.

   1. We are going to affect one another, so we need to be able to be changed by each other.

   2. How do you respond to the need to adapt and change within your relationship?

   3. What are the changing contexts in which your relationship is shaped?