The Vested Way

Thinkers50 2025 Breakthrough Idea Award Winner "If you're ready to tackle your impossible, Kate Vitasek's The Vested Way is the field guide to help you climb your own Mount Everest." - Alison Levine, team captain, American Women's Everest Expedition and author of On the Edge Every great partnership starts with a simple but radical idea: we can do more together than either of us can do alone. The best partnerships collaborate so well that they are able to achieve the impossible. Unfortunately, many find their partnerships, both personal and professional, stuck in an us-versus-them mindset, using methods and metrics that pit partners against each other. Why? Because getting collaboration right isn't something most of us have learned how to do effectively. Until now. The Vested Way is an inspiring, research-backed guide to building the kind of deeply collaborative partnerships where people learn how to achieve the impossible by harnessing the best in each other. Developed through research at the University of Tennessee and tested by more than 150 organizations on five continents, the Vested framework has been adopted by Intel, bp, EY, Discovery Health and the Canadian Government to turn transactional relationships into engines of mutual innovation and success. Vitasek, a business executive turned academic, has spent her career on all sides of complex strategic business partnerships. She first worked at fast-paced and innovative companies like P&G and Microsoft, then on the supplier side and as a consultant, and most recently as a researcher and Distinguished Fellow at the University of Tennessee's Global Supply Chain Institute. That rare vantage point gives Vitasek the ability to see partnerships from every angle. And that perspective spawned a research project that was named the Breakthrough Idea for 2025. Through vivid, honest stories, Vitasek lays out a practical guide consisting of five proven rules and practical tools to help you rethink your own partnerships. If you are struggling to fix a failing relationship or simply want to elevate an already successful relationship, The Vested Way is a must-read to help you achieve the impossible.