November 14, 2006

Dear BNET reader,

Strategic alliances often sound good on paper but are hard to manage successfully in reality.

If your company's growth path includes pairing up with another company, check out these BNET resources. They will help you anticipate problems and establish good relationship management practices.

The Role of Alliances in Corporate Strategy
Alliances have become an increasingly important part of corporate strategy. They can be extremely useful in situations of high uncertainty and for growth opportunities that a company either cannot or does not want to pursue on its own. But the advantages of shared risk are often offset by unclear governance and lack of genuine commitment. This report analyzes research on alliances and defines a six-step process for successfully managing them.

Successfully Establishing and Managing Strategic Alliances
The establishment of strategic alliances with both for-profit and non-profit entities is an increasingly useful tool in the association executive's tool kit. These relationships can be used to add talent to a difficult problem, target a new audience, or create mechanisms for shared resources.

Do Alliances Promote Knowledge Flows?
This in-depth paper explores the role of inter-firm alliances as a mechanism for sharing technological knowledge. Because firms often form alliances to promote technology sharing, a comparison is made between the extent and nature of knowledge flows between alliance partners to analogous flows among pairs of firms that are not allied.

Creating And Managing International Alliance Relationships
Forming an international alliance with another company allows you to leverage your own resources and capabilities to achieve strategic business objectives that might otherwise be beyond your company's reach. No organization has unlimited resources. Gaps in capabilities or resources may become apparent as new strategies are embraced as a means of achieving your company's growth objectives. Forming an alliance relationship is one way of filling these gaps.

Strategic Alliances: How to Manage, How to Measure
Strategic alliances are a vibrant feature of the corporate landscape, and one that has seen a surge in popularity. By creating formal partnerships, companies can quickly acquire product development capabilities and marketing expertise that would otherwise require years of effort and considerable expense. This article highlights that alliances are easy to form but tough to manage and measure. Companies that score the biggest successes know how to select the best metrics and update them regularly.

The CFO's Perspective on Alliances: Growth, Risk, and Measurement
Executives admit that although alliances are important sources of market access and expertise, they are also fraught with complexity and uncertainty. CFOs believe strong alliance performance depends on management focus and discipline.

Strategic Alliances: Finding the Hidden Leverage for Success
Mergers, joint ventures, strategic alliances - businesses are increasingly relying on these activities for strategic advantage. All too frequently, however, the potential benefits fail to materialize. While much attention is focused on the financial and contractual aspects of an alliance, it is believed that the key to organizational partnerships lies in a different arena. The success of alliance depends on the "human factors"-- the ways that people think and interact. This article provides practical insight into both the hurdles that impede cross-organizational alliances and the processes necessary for their success.

Sincerely,

Veronica Combs
BNET

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