Posted at 12:14 PM in Alliance Management Best Practices, Alliance Strategy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Have you read a book in the past year that made an impact on you and how you manage alliances and partnerships? Could even be one you've written!!
Here are some that I read this past year which I found had relevance to the field of alliance management. NOT listed in any order other than how they were stacked by my desk.
1. The Innovator's Dilemma - Clayton M. Christensen
An oldie but goodie, copyright 1997, this book focuses on disruptive technology and how it can leave market leaders of mainstream technology in the dust. Required reading for anyone working with technology alliances and perhaps insightful as we try to navigate a disruptive economy, a prime time for disruptive technologies to take root.
2. Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing - Peter Gloor & Scott Cooper Trendspotting.
Don't we all wish we had crystal balls. One of the more interesting facets is how to leverage social networking to spot trends. Who is linking to whom. What ideas get picked up most by bloggers? The idea has some interesting implications for alliance networks.
3. Divide or Conquer: How great teams turn conflict into strength - Diana McLain Smith
I had the fortune of hearing Diana address a local (to me, Silicon Valley) chapter of the Association of Strategic Planners (ASP). She provides sound and practical advice and frameworks for altering how we interact. Her approach had very strong appeal to a community of engineers and technology nerds, not known for being touchy/feely, mainly because there was a defined framework for action vs emotions.
4. Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time - Susan Scott
"You get what you tolerate" That was the fierce nugget that caused me to sit up and pay attention. Scott provides a recipe for those difficult conversations in a way that elicits cooperation and change. I've tried it, it works, usually. I haven't gotten my husband to clean the barn, yet.
5. The World is Flat - Thomas L. Friedman
Globalization means more businesses depend upon a network of worldwide alliances. Alliance management skills have never been needed more. I reread this book this year trying to better understand how we position our profession in the context of a global economy.
6.The Speed of Trust - Steven Covey, Jr.
I am frequently asked "How do you build trust? How do you get it back when it is broken?" I found many good answers here. I now recommend this book to everyone who asks me about trust issues.
In fact, I think I loaned my copy out, since I can't find it. Now who would I trust with that?
7. Strategic Alliances: Three Ways to Make Them Work - Steve Stienhilber, V.P. Strategic Alliances, Cisco
I put this on my favorites list of books regarding strategic alliances. This is a short but powerful read, chocked full of straight talking advice about what it takes to make alliances succeed. As we know by all the research out there, the success rate is less than 50% and largely because organizations still approach alliances in an ad hoc fashion. Stienhilber addresses the issue to the CEO on how to get it right: the right framework, the right organization, and the right relationships.
What do you have on your list? Why would you recommend it?
Posted at 03:09 PM in Strategic Alliances | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Is it time to reevaluate your alliance
investment? Do you have the right
partners to weather the economic climate?
Are you retaining the right partners to ensure you have a strategic advantage
when the thaw comes?
Posted at 10:18 PM in Alliance Management Best Practices, Business - Partnering, Strategic Alliances | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 09:44 PM in Alliance Management Best Practices, Business - Partnering, Strategic Alliances | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Strategic alliances are often viewed as
a strategy for growth and perhaps not always a strategy for economically
challenging times. But many of the reasons that make strategic alliances a good
idea in good times make them an even better strategy for uncertain times.
What are these reasons to partner?
Create greater value for customers.
With businesses and consumers becoming more careful with spending, products and
services must provide compelling value and solve real problems. Well
crafted strategic alliances are built around customer needs and are
differentiated from offers from the competitors. Cisco Systems maintained their
investment in alliances during the economic downturn earlier in this decade and
refocused those alliances to create differentiated go-to-market solutions for
joint customers. They consequently saw an increase of 12% revenue in their
alliance related revenues, while revenues across the company over the same
period of time remained flat.
Leverage new sources of innovation.
Innovative new products or services that serve unmet customer needs create new
sources of revenue often at lower costs and shared risks
with your partner. Proctor and Gamble is an example of a company that was
struggling in 2001 with a dearth of new products in the pipeline. They adopted
an innovation strategy that sourced 50% of their new products from external
sources. While the business press touted
this as a break through innovation strategy, an alliance professional readily
sees this as a partnering strategy as well.
Harnessing economies of scale, reducing costs
of production and distribution are also benefits of strategic alliances and
also a great strategy to economize in uncertain times. Recently, United
Airlines was actively searching for a merger partner to help create these
economies in reaction to rising fuel costs and industry restructuring.
They courted Continental Airlines and US Airways, but ultimately decided to
partner with both in order to gain many of the same benefits of a merger but to
avoid the high costs of acquisition and integration.
A white paper describing the Cisco case study is available on the PhoenixCG website: http://www.phoenixcg.com/documents/recessionstrat.pdf
Posted at 04:15 PM in Alliance Management Best Practices | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The April meeting
of the Silicon Valley/Norcal Chapter of the Association of Strategic Alliance
Professionals featured a panel
discussion on Coopetition. It turns out
to be as hard to pronounce as it is to do. The panel often struggled with every verb and noun form of it:
Coopetive, co-opeting. It might have been humorous, but the topic is so
difficult. How do companies partner with
their arch competitors and why?
Posted at 10:03 AM in Alliance Management Best Practices | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
"Collaborative Innovation: Leveraging Strategic Partnerships for the Global Playing Field"
Sunday, March
30, 2008
BlogTalkRadio: www.BlogTalkRadio.com/CoachforInnovation
6:00
p.m. Pacific/9:00 p.m. Eastern
Collaborative innovation is rapidly becoming a key
differentiator for organizations. But as enterprises rush to take advantage of
global opportunities without effectively playing the strategic alliances card
the risk of stifling innovation increases.
Join Dee McCrorey, host of
the CFI Radio Hour and strategic alliance experts Robert Porter Lynch, founder
of the global Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, Norma Watenpaugh,
and Brian Handley and discover how you can play the strategic alliances game
card as competitive advantage:
- Collaborative innovation – what it
is and is n not
- Collaboration skills as key
differentiators
- Art and science of alliance management
- Trends and
global competitiveness
- What's happening in Silicon Valley
Join
us Sunday, March 30, at 6:00pm Pacific /9:00Eastern for the Coach for Innovation Show – Change that Makes a Difference
Posted at 08:01 PM in Alliance Management Best Practices | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A
successful alliance program begins at the top with the support of the CEO. Like many other things, the CEO influences company
culture, models the behavior, and sets the priorities in collaborative
relationships. CEO support and that of
the CXO staff fosters the environment where alliances can thrive and deliver
results.
When
you look at the management model of strategic alliances, it becomes clear why
this level of support is critical. As
strategic alliances stretch across a company’s value chain, you find that
company to company collaboration touches multiple functional organizations –
R&D, Operations, Marketing, Sales, etc. It takes the active involvement of senior management to keep the
behaviors of the functional organizations in alignment with the company’s
strategic goals in partnering with an alliance.
Companies that are well known for alliance excellence not only foster the partner friendly environment from the top down but they assign executive sponsors to shape and manage the strategic intent of the most important relationships. IBM is one of those companies that has a well developed Executive Sponsorship program built into their most important alliances. For the largest and most strategic alliances, alliance strategy and performance is reported at the Board of Directors level and the CEO, Sam Palmisano, regularly meets with his alliance CEO counterpart. Key business leaders are assigned as executive sponsors, especially to those partners that are considered important to the success of those lines of business for which they are responsible. These executives are actively involved in those alliances and have a clear stake in their success.
Secret
#4 is the fourth installment to the Eight
Secrets of Successful Strategic Alliances webcast broadcast by the American
Management Association.
For more information, download the white paper: "Effective Executive Sponsorship" in the Resources area of the Phoenix Consulting Group Website.
Posted at 10:30 PM in Alliance Management Best Practices | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
What do you think of, when you think win-win? Most
business people will interpret that as "I win and my partner wins".
Unfortunately quite a number will behave differently: "win-win means I win
twice!" This, as you can imagine, does not produce sustainable partnerships.
Smart business people will not stick with a losing proposition and the alliance
collapses or just never performs to expectations. Strong alliances and smart
alliance managers ensure that there is benefit and return on investment
for all partners in the alliance - a win-win value proposition. But
something is still missing from this value proposition.
Sustainable alliances are formed around creating a
winning value proposition for customers. So great alliances keep a clear
focus on the customer - a Win-Win- Win. Alliances can be formed at any point of
the value chain and can create great gains and benefits for partners and
customers whether they are formed to develop new innovative products, drive
operational efficiencies and better service, or create competitive advantage
for your customer.
The Starfish Alliance is an example of an alliance formed in
Rolls-Royce Logistics supply chain to increase service level to customers and
to decrease costs for the partners. Rolls-Royce chairs a community of
five logistic suppliers to optimize end-end performance of the supply chain
instead of the individual business silos. Through open collaboration, the
alliance has decreased costs by 20% and has a record of 99.9% on-time delivery
to customers.
Initially Rolls-Royce faced distrust and skepticism in their vision. "Logistics companies don't think this way". They were able to overcome that attitude through a system of Alliance Core Values that was mutually accepted by the partners. These values included "focus on the customer" foremost as well as "open, honest, proactive communications", "promote environmental responsibility and business ethics", "create opportunties for growth and breakthroughs". These values became the governing principles for the alliance and helped to foster win-win-win thinking and behavior.
To learn more, read the white paper on the www.phoenixcg.com website:
Building Win-Win-Win Value Propositions: The Key to Sustainable Partnerships
Posted at 04:37 PM in Alliance Management Best Practices | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)