Strategic Alliances

• Book Title: Harvard Business Review on Strategic Alliances
• Author:-
• Year written/published: 2002
• Book Source: Google Books, Library
• Some extracts:

Competitive collaboration adhere to a set of simple but powerful principles:

• Collaboration is competition in a different form
• Harmony is not the most important measure of success
• Cooperation has limits. Companies must defend against competitive compromise
• Leaning from partners is paramount

Avoiding self-deception:

• We’re better off partnering with X than competing against it in our core business
• By joining forces with another second tier company, we can create a strong company while fixing our problems together
• We need a strong partner to improve skills
• by partnering with another company in our industry, we can access its new products and technologies while minimizing our investments in core products and technologies
• We can use an alliance to raise capital without giving up management control

6 types of alliances:

1. Collision between competitors
2. alliances of the weak
3. disguised sales
4. bootstrap alliances
5. evolutions to a sale
6. alliances of complementary equals

some lessons learnt:

• Groups are only as strong as the alliances within them: manage individual relationships carefully
• Effective groups are worth more than the sum of the alliances within them: manage the group as a whole
• the sky is not the limit in alliance groups: expand with caution where you sit in which network determines what you get: position your company strategically within and among alliance groups
• a lack of commitment is the flip side of flexibility: be sure that the network strategy is sustainable for your company