Smart Alliances

In this work, the authors show how to identify opportunities for alliances, and then go through an eight-step roadmap for setting up and managing them effectively. They include a "best practices" section, covering European, Asian and Latin-American alliances. In the old days-the 1980s-a company that lacked a competitive capability could either develop it internally or gain it via acquisition. Today, the speed of business has accelerated to such a rate that companies no longer have the time to secure such crucial capabilities using either of those methods. The solution? Alliances. \x09 And yet, surveys of CEOs show that the lack of know-how for forming lasting alliances is one of the biggest gaps in business knowledge. Even in companies with successful experiences, the learning often fails to filter down past the senior level. In 1988, Booz**Allen & Hamilton, one of the top management consulting firms in the world, became aware of the problem. Since then, the firm has become renowned for gathering the best thinking on alliance building from companies in every major industry around the globe. Now, in Smart Alliances, two of Booz**Allen's senior consultants distill that knowledge into an eight-step plan for building and sustaining strategic alliances at every level of the company. From identifying opportunities to mapping objectives to planning and implementing compatible partnerships, they share the secrets of how alliances can be used to take a company global-through the success stories of corporate legends like Corning, Ford, and Hewlett-Packard in regions as diverse as Europe, Japan, and India. But authors Harbison and Pekar go far beyond the anecdotal. Using firsthand experience, in-depth interviews, and a wealth of collective research on more than 6,000 international alliances, they put hard numbers to this increasingly vital strategic skill. Their best practices can help companies jump the learning curve and form the kind of sustained partnerships that make for repeatable success.