Unlikely Partnerships

WARMER · IN PAIRS

Unlikely duos

In 4 minutes, brainstorm a list of unlikely duos - from real life, films, history, anywhere - that somehow work.

BRAINSTORM

1. Shrek and Donkey

2. ____________________

3. ____________________

4. ____________________

5. ____________________

PICTURE

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BRAINSTORM

Your list

DISCUSS

• Which duo on our list is the strangest? And which is the most successful?

• A prediction: most of your examples are pairs of people. Did anyone come up with a partnership where the two sides are inanimate objects?

• Why do you think "opposites" sometimes make better partners than lookalikes?

PICTURE

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Which of these really exist(ed) - and which are made up?

1. A Formula 1 pit crew trained hospital doctors how to hand over patients after surgery.

2. A Dutch city turned the roofs of its bus stops into gardens for bees.

3. A Japanese railway company employed a cat as an official station master.

4. Dogs work alongside doctors, using their noses to detect cancer in samples.

5. A Premier League football club hired a chess grandmaster to design its corner kicks.

6. A London bank uses trained falcons to carry USB sticks between its offices.

THE TRUTH

So - which ones were real?

1. Real.

2. Real.

3. Real.

4. Real.

5. Fake.

6. Fake.

JIGSAW READING

Case files

Let's find out more about these unlikely partnerships. You get two cases each.

STUDENT A

STUDENT B

The Pit Stop + The Centaurs

The Nose + The Bee Stops

As you read, think about your answers to the following questions.

1. Who are the partners?

2. Why is this partnership unlikely?

3. What does each side bring?

4. Does it actually work?

CASE FILE A1 · STUDENT A

The Pit Stop

Seven seconds, in perfect silence.

In the early 2000s, doctors at Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London noticed a problem: the riskiest moment for their patients was not the surgery itself, but the handover - moving a child from the operating theatre to intensive care, with dozens of tubes, machines and instructions changing hands at once.

Then, one evening, two exhausted surgeons watched a Formula 1 race on television and saw a pit crew change four wheels and refuel a car in under seven seconds, in perfect silence. They contacted Ferrari.

The pit crew's secrets turned out to be simple: one person - and only one - in charge, a fixed role for everyone, no talking unless something goes wrong, and practising the routine hundreds of times. The hospital rebuilt its handover process around these rules, and technical errors fell by around 40%.

The two teams had almost nothing in common - except that both moved something fragile and precious under extreme time pressure.

PICTURE

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CASE FILE A2 · STUDENT A

The Centaurs

If you cannot beat them, join them.

After a chess computer beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, everyone assumed the story was over: machines win, humans lose. Kasparov drew a different conclusion. He proposed "centaur chess", where a human and a computer play together as one team against other human-computer pairs.

The results were shocking. In a famous 2005 tournament, the winners were not grandmasters with supercomputers but two American amateurs with three ordinary PCs. Their advantage was the quality of the partnership: they knew exactly when to trust the machines, when to overrule them, and how to make the most of what each partner did best.

The lesson - a weak human plus a machine plus a good process can beat a strong human, and even a strong machine - is now discussed everywhere from hospitals to law firms. The partners could not be more different: one side has intuition and doubts, the other has none of either.

PICTURE

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CASE FILE B1 · STUDENT B

The Nose

The dog detects; the humans decide.

A dog's nose has up to 300 million scent receptors; ours have about six million. Charities such as Medical Detection Dogs in the UK have turned this gap into a genuine medical partnership.

In the lab, trained dogs screen rows of samples and can indicate the smell of certain cancers with remarkable accuracy; in studies, some dogs have outperformed standard laboratory tests. Other dogs live full-time with patients: a diabetes alert dog can smell when its owner's blood sugar is dropping and warn them minutes before any device does - some even fetch the glucose kit.

The division of labour is strict: the dog detects, and the humans decide. No one is suggesting that a spaniel should replace an oncologist. But the two species bring completely different equipment to the same problem, and neither could do the other's job.

The dogs, for their part, are paid in tennis balls, and appear to consider this generous.

PICTURE

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CASE FILE B2 · STUDENT B

The Bee Stops

https://jonnieworldwalker.com/

beekeeping-bus-stops-

in-utrecht-nederland/

One partner has no idea it has signed anything.

Cities and nature look like natural enemies: one paves, the other grows. The Dutch city of Utrecht decided to treat nature as a partner instead - and it started with something absurdly small.

In 2019, the city covered the roofs of more than 300 bus shelters with sedum plants and wildflowers, creating a network of tiny gardens for bees and other pollinators. The "bee stops" also absorb rainwater, cool the street in summer and trap fine dust from traffic.

Each side of the partnership delivers: the city provides habitat, and the insects provide pollination, biodiversity and - let us be honest - excellent publicity, as cities around the world rushed to copy the idea. Utrecht has since added green roofs, "bee hotels" and strict rules for its own buildings.

It is a partnership with one unusual feature: one of the partners has no idea it has signed anything.

PICTURE

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SUMMARISE

Now summarise what you have read for your partner

Things to include:

1. who (or what) are the partners?

2. why is it such an unlikely combination?

3. what does each side give and get?

4. one detail that surprised you

COMPLETE THE FILE

Now work in pairs and fill the grid together

Case

The partners

Why unlikely?

What each brings

What makes it work

A: Pit Stop

B: Centaurs

C: The Nose

D: Bee Stops

DISCUSS

So what counts as a partnership?

Take them in any order.

1. Back in lesson 1 we asked what turns a connection into a partnership: equality? trust? a shared goal? Which of these four cases passes that test - and which stretches the word "partnership" furthest?

2. Is a human + AI team like the centaurs a real partnership, or just a person using a tool? Where is the line?

3. Ferrari and the hospital were not competitors - but Apple and Samsung are. Can you truly partner with someone who wants to beat you?

4. The bus-stop bees do not know they are partners. Does a partnership need both sides to agree to it?

5. Which unlikely partnerships do you think might be considered totally normal in 10, 100 or 1,000 years?

PICTURE

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CREATIVE TASK

The Unlikely Partnership Agency

In pairs prepare a 60-to-90-second pitch in support of a new unlikely partnership.

YOUR CLIENT

YOUR PITCH MUST INCLUDE

1. Google Maps + escape rooms

2. NASA + LEGO

3. Museums + Minecraft

4. Tinder + a national library

5. Your own: _______ + _______

• what each partner gives, and what each partner gets.

• a name and a slogan for the collaboration

• why it will work

NOTES