Another company (a host, merchant, health plan or benefits platform, app store or platform marketplace, distributor, parent company) offers the product to that partner's own customers inside an existing relationship, and the route carried a material share of adoption.
How Distribution Partnerships work
A partner offers the product inside its own customer relationship, so the company reaches buyers without winning each one; the partner gains bargaining power as the route grows.
How companies won with Distribution Partnerships
From the win chains in Strategy Canon case studies: what the winner did, and what its rival did at the same step.
vs. Jobber
ServiceTitan
Trade-association referrals instead of paid sales
What it did
Almost no sales spend to 2014; half of customers via Nexstar and other associations by 2015
Jobber
Self-serve: published low prices, free trial, grants and free education
Free core service with paid features bought online from launch (Sept 2010)
Akamai
Revenue billed on traffic delivered, sold by a direct sales force and 100+ channel partners such as AT&T and IBM to enterprises like Apple and eBay (2015)
Which partner offers it to its own customers, and how much adoption came that way?
Who names it
Author
What they call it / where it appears
Bob Moore +
Ecosystem-led growth
Brandenburger & Nalebuff +
Complementors
Note. Near miss: An app-store listing with no documented installs. Does not count: An adviser or reseller paid per account (Channel Partners); OEM bundling inside hardware (OEM Licensing).