Developing Public / Private Partnerships #1

I have just arrived back from a conference on organizational resiliency where part of the focus was public  / private partnerships. The conference was presented by the Ontario Hospital Association and held in Toronto (OHA).

It's interesting in itself that the OHA had partnered with the Toronto Board of Trade, the Disaster Recovery Information Exchange (DRIE), the Ontario Association of Emergency Managers (OAEM) among others to host this event in their "Business of Health" series. 

I worked with the organizers of the conference to set it up and immediately one problem came to the fore: price.  In hindsight, as I watched the day progress it seemed this issue underscores one of the problems of engaging both sectors at the same time.  On the surface, the problem was that (in general terms) a municipal employee tends to be adverse to spending high dollars to attend conferences, workshops, etc. (or has to go through hoops, has limits, must apply months in advance, etc), whereas many in the private sector do not have these same controls or limits.  Further, many in the private sector will not attend a low cost event under the impression that low cost = low value.

The deeper problem is the entirely different way these two sectors view spending money, investment in people and projects, bottom line results, etc.  My own perspective is that private companies are more inclined to invest money into projects that ultimately improve their bottom line, whether directly through profits, or indirectly through improved customer satisfaction, greater competitive advantage, etc.  In the public sector, the improved 'bottom line' is only one of many considerations, along with perception of 'good fiscal management' (ie don't raise taxes), the 'need to succeed' (most of our work reflects well or poorly on someone else), timing (elections, budgets, re-orgs, etc.) and other non-monetary, barely tangible issues.  I know this is a crass oversimplification, but you get the point: these are two widely separate systems.

Pricing was our dilemma for this past event.  In the end, the initial price was dropped to be inclusive of the public sector, but not so much that it "cheapened" the day.  The mix of sectors was good, but the overall attendance was not as high as desired.  We are left wondering whether there can be a price point that is low enough for the public sector, yet high enough for the private sector and still (at least) break even.