Research
An open research practice for partnership operators.
Most partnership research is vendor-funded, proprietary, or anecdotal. BlueThread publishes transparent, open-methodology research that operators can inspect, challenge, and build upon.
Help build the industry's first open benchmark for modern partnership organizations.
7 minutes · results publish August 2026 · respondents get the data first.
Current research
State of Partnerships 2026: Where AI Earns Trust and Where It Stops
A survey of partner practitioners. 94% already use AI, and roughly half still won't approve a deal registration without a human checking the work.
Partnership Roles in AI: October 2026 Salary Intelligence
Pay ranges, role demand and what moves compensation for partnership roles at AI companies. Free with your name, company and work email.
State of the Partner Operations Role - Q3 2026
81 hand-coded job descriptions, reviewed by three practitioner leaders. Five archetypes, a proposed maturity framework, and a compensation cross-cut.
The New Economics of Ecosystems
A 14-episode research series on how partnership economics are being rewritten: who creates value, who captures it, and who gets paid.
AI Partner Program Index - Edition 1
Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google have committed more than $1B to partner ecosystems in five months. Scored on one seven-dimension framework.
State of the Partner Manager Role - 2026
121 US tech job descriptions analyzed for compensation, AI fluency, archetypes, equity, and program scope.
Partner Intelligence: Anthropic vs OpenAI
A side-by-side read of how the two frontier-model vendors are building partner ecosystems - programs, motions, attach, and where each is winning.
The Benchmark Was Wrong: What AI-Native Partnerships Actually Requires
Hours saved is the wrong benchmark. The three bars AI has to clear before partnerships becomes a real revenue function.
The Partner Reset: It's Already Happening
Field research on how the co-sell layer is being rebuilt - and the diagnostic that scores where your program sits today.
Coming research
A rolling roadmap of the studies we're scoping, fielding, or writing. Subscribe below to be notified when each ships.
AI in Partnerships
How partnership teams are deploying - and gating - AI across sourcing, co-sell, and attribution.
Partner Compensation Benchmark
Base, variable, and quota structures for PMs, CSMs, and channel AEs across ARR bands.
Co-Sell Benchmark
Sourced vs. influenced ratios, cycle times, and win rates across hyperscaler and ISV motions.
- Ecosystem Technology Stack · Q4 2026
- Marketplace Adoption Report · Q1 2027
- Partner Productivity Index · Q2 2027
Public methodology
Every report ships with a written methodology document - what we measured, how we measured it, and what we excluded.
Published dataset
The underlying data table is downloadable so readers can rerun the analysis, dispute a number, or extend the work.
Disclosed AI assistance
Where AI helped with research, drafting, or synthesis, we say so.
AI-assisted where noted. All methodology and editorial judgments are BlueThread's.
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