This article studies the essence of HR partnership in new intra-organizational and interdepartmental interaction models to develop human potential and effective search, timely training, and development of enterprise personnel. The article presents an overview of the approaches of foreign and domestic authors to innovative forms and technologies of partnerships in business and education. Particular attention is paid to HR partnership, which is considered not only as a technology but also as a condition for the development of business and education in current socio-economic conditions, including the digital challenge. The article shows the importance of HR partnership in various areas of intra-organizational and interdepartmental interaction, including the development of an enterprise's business in the field of consulting services and innovative practices of project education based on an informal partnership of enterprises and students of the educational program "Personnel Management" of the leading Federal University of the Urals. Studying a set of factors contributing to the development of HR partnerships and revealing the essence of the role of an HR specialist as a partner and using the example of a vocational education institution and a company in the field of consulting services, the authors substantiate the allocation of HR partnerships as a condition for the development of business and education. Combining theory and practice, the authors propose a number of practical recommendations to use HR partnerships as a resource for business development and education, maintaining and developing employees' potential. The main problems in this regard are: the underestimation of the advantages of HR partnership for business development and education by the company's management, the usual vision of a functional rather than role-based approach to HR, focus on its limitations rather than advantages, the asynchrony of the stages of modernization of the education and HR spheres, and short-term implementation of joint projects.