Network Orchestrator
a strategy for self-sustainability
More self-sustainability means having more autonomy and less reliance on external funding, expertise or decisions. It means having a larger capacity to choose and negotiate with other initiatives what’s best for your project and what’s not. It means an increasingly equitable participation, which will lead to development models that are more comprehensive and relevant for all, that is, more sustainable. Know more
Many development initiatives become more self-sustainable by defining what the appropriate role for their project is –that is, what role would best enable them to meet their objectives while leveraging resources, time and effort. One of their options is becoming a network orchestrator.
The role that an initiative adopts to address its target problem has very important effects on the way projects are designed, resources managed and allocated, and self-sustainability fostered. For this reason, several initiatives carefully consider and decide what they want to do with the problem they are tackling. Some projects choose to lay the groundwork for eradicating the problem in the future; others prefer to grow and become major service providers; and still others aim to devise and experiment with solutions that others can replicate elsewhere.
Initiatives that choose to act as network orchestrators have decided that the best way to leverage their efforts and resources is to facilitate communication and coordination between different projects, initiatives or actors that could work together to meet a goal. This is the model used by companies such as Airbnb, Uber or Facebook: they do not offer lodging rooms, transportation or friendships, but a platform that enables and facilitates communication between users, on the one hand, and homeowners, drivers, etc., on the other. In a similar way, a network orchestrator in the development field creates spaces, mechanisms and proposals to encourage cooperation to solve specific problems, facilitate connections and forge collaborations. In other words, network orchestrators channel and coordinate efforts to solve problems of common interest.
This work model helps many projects be more self-sustainable because, by concentrating their resources on getting several actors with different profiles and facilitating their engagement and collaboration, they tend to achieve more comprehensive and relevant solutions for more people using fewer resources of their own. After all, each actor brings in knowledge, experiences, ideas, resources, contacts and influences.
Some network orchestrators design and promote internet platforms, others form organizations or help fundraise for projects, and still others organize congresses or events from time to time.
There are many different ways of orchestrating networks for a project to increase its self-sustainability. Take a look at how these initiatives have done it!
If you found this self-sustainability strategy useful, perhaps you’d like to have a look at these too: