As I read the pages on illuminating--interdependence--resources, it brought to mind some ecosystem work we have done in Florida and Oregon: in particular the reality that how you frame the question (or 'set up the conversation' in C•CUBE parlance) can influence the way things are surfaced.

To wit: in work with Oregon ecosystem stakeholders who were small businesses in landscaping/ag/farmers markets etc. there was a cool practice of a shared tool/equipment library that we learned about through interviews. This was ecosystem collaboration, and tied to resources and interdependence--all of this week's themes. And it might have been an opening for a conversation about other collaborations. But the way I framed the question was from protocol designed to uncover tech-based innovation possibilities that were latent and being neglected.

Total mis-match. These small businesses were doing innovative practices, and they already had relationships that could be based for doing more. But because I had framed the discussion as designed to illuminate "tech-based innovation" it slammed the door shut--even a discussion about whether tech had a role in supporting their work.

In Florida, an ecosystem with a lot of federal players (defense, and other research dollars) and many overlapping/competing higher ed and regional institutions it was hard to figure out which siloes to try to bridge and how to do so because the institutions had relationships/contacts that they guarded fairly closely.

Framing it as "hey everybody, the gang's all here, and good news, we're an ecosystem" which is sort of what I did created some enthusiasm and positive energy but it in no way bridged siloes or positioned the questions what the real nature of the collaboration would be. Had I to do it over again, I would have used C•CUBE framework guidance to assess just where in the process they were and maybe framed it with something like Strategic Doing (four questions: What Could We Do? What Should We Do? What Will We Do? What's Our 30/30?--this last refers to what we will do in 30 days.

I wonder if others have experience with this 'framing issue' and how they figured out how to set up their ecosystem conversations in ways that actually illuminated what was going on?