Strategic-alliance
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Great Book!
Very comprehensive. A real advance in alliance managementBased on this extensive experience gained from working on dozens of alliances, they have developed an "Alliance Framework" that covers the topic - from deal conception to the termination clauses. This systematic structure, using a six-step process, covers the process from end to end, and the text is full of useful advice on almost every aspect of success and potential failure. Given the extensive experience of the authors, they have seen just about everything that could and does happen, and developed scenarios to both exploit opportunities and counter challenges.
The authors admit that "creating and managing strategic alliances is an art" - but to help the "struggling artist" they have crafted an excellent how-to book. Despite their protestations that their Alliance Framework is "not a step by step check list", any alliance manager could do much worse than follow its advice to the letter.
The book is not an easy read. It is not to be skimmed on a flight to Tokyo. Rather the serious alliance manager will lock themselves in their office with pen and pad, and pour over the book page by page, to get the full benefit of the wealth of experience that the authors bring to the subject.
The book could benefit from more detail on individual deals. While the authors have distilled the essence of their multiple experiences, the readers could better learn from individual and practical examples. Although confidentiality is always as issue, whatever can be done describe real examples beyond the Battelle alliance, would significantly enhance the value of the book.
Very useful book
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Great Review in Foundation News & CommentaryJuly/August 2001
Vol. 42, No. 4
Review by Beth Brown
We all want to partner. We all speak of collaborative spirit. But when the rubber meets the road, what does collaboration really entail, and what's the difference between a deal and an alliance?
James Austin breaks down the notion of collaboration into a must-read users guide for any organizational leader embarking on a collaboration. And although the book is geared toward corporations and their nonprofit partners, many of the lessons are universal and can be applied to any individual or organization considering a joint venture, be it a marriage or cross-sector alliance.
Austin notes the role serendipity and personal relationships plays in introducing partnerships-a conversation in a coffee shop or during a long plane ride-often sparking the "ah-ha" moment leading to the realization that a corporation and a nonprofit have what Austin calls mission mesh. The organizations' leaders can see how their visions' core competencies can make a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Through in-depth and candid examples from partnerships, including those between Starbucks and CARE, Timberland and City Year, and American Eagle Outfitters and Jumpstart, Austin chronicles the necessary, and often awkward, stages businesses and nonprofits pass through in order to become strategic partners.
Austin has a healthy skepticism for the ease of collaboration. He often likens it to dating, and as with a courting pair from different countries, he sees the cultural and values barriers between the sectors as the greatest obstacle to collaboration. The corporate leaders he interviews are open about the fact that their bottom line is to make a profit and a partnership can often assist their public relations efforts.
For the nonprofits, there is greater accountability held when working with corporations, and sometimes the social value nonprofits generate is not easily quantifiable. In addition, each can be associated with the mistakes of the other. However, the payoff is that one can also be associated with the success of the other and be exposed to new audiences-potential customers for the business, future partners for the nonprofit.
One interesting observation Austin makes is the inherent noncollaborative nature of a philanthropic relationship (it is the lowest on the collaborative totem poll). Although he does not single out foundations, he characterizes the giving of money by one organization to another as an exchange of resources for warm fuzzy feelings. Among philanthropic relationships, the venture philanthropy approach seems to offer a model of partnership similar in the level of engagement to the examples mentioned in Austin's book.
The details from the examples and extensive quotes of philanthropic and business leaders, such as Aaron Lieberman of Jumpstart and Jeff Swartz of Timberland, give the reader an insider's view of what went into the partnership. At the same time, the book is filled with simple big-picture truths such as "serious relationships, organizational and interpersonal, should not be rushed." That's a helpful notion to remember with everyone so eager to jump on the partnership bandwagon. Austin reminds us that having and keeping a partnership is not the end all-adding value is the goal and sustainability does not necessarily equal effectiveness.
Austin's greatest contributions to fostering collaboration are the tools the book includes: questions, checklists, continuums-cheat sheets for collaboration-that would be an asset to any leader considering partnership. In addressing the questions he poses, Austin leads potential collaborators through the development of a partnership purpose.
The final chapter of the book contains a complete conceptual framework for collaboration that seems universally applicable to any partnership. These "Seven C's of Collaboration" include Connection with Purpose and People, Clarity of Purpose, Congruency of Mission, Creation of Value, Communication Between Partners, Continual Learning, and Commitment to the Partnership.
So let's all take a cross-sector breath before claiming our next partner and take the messages of James Austin's book to heart and practice.
---------
Beth Brown is the director of Public Policy and Emerging Issues at the Council on Foundations.
Prize Winning Book
Well written and practical.The issues covered by the book are very topical. Strategic alliances have become increasingly important to organizational survival. In addition, some organizations, including businesses, recognize that, for the long haul, they need to be in closer harmony with deeper aspirations of their customers, employees and shareholders. Others oppose such approaches as a dangerous temptation to fuzzy thinking and conflicted agendas. Yet others view the non-economic motives of their constituents as only relevant to marketing campaigns or high-minded mission statements.
This practical book addresses these opportunities and challenges systematically and with insight. It doesn't push quick fixes or high-risk strategies, but rather presents processes and analytical frameworks that support sequential acts of collaboration.
The author is a good teacher and effectively uses case studies to support his recommendations. His approach is practical and recognizes the reality that every relationship involves an exchange of value. His emphasis is on having clear agendas and then searching together for common outcomes built around relative strengths.

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A Remarkable AccomplishmentEach of the seven substantive chapters looks at a business using a slightly different lens: strategic, operational, financial and accounting, legal, tax, organizational and, oddly but perhaps most interestingly, the Internet. Scattered through the chapter are cautionary tales of what can go wrong in the real world if the practitioner or the client cuts corners. At the end of each chapter is a series of charts and lists which sets forth the subjects of investigation, often with indications of where to find the information or how it is important to the evaluation of the target.
For anyone who has to conduct, supervise or coordinate due diligence, this overview is remarkably helpful. For the young attorney, accountant or business strategist, Due Diligence provides a veritable Bible for his or her own due diligence. But more importantly, the book informs the reader how the information gleaned fits into the overall process.
Rosenbloom's brief but enlightening look at the due diligence world post 9/11 is among the most compelling parts of the book. This section alone can be worth the price of the book. The possible effects of terrorism or war on a business, in concrete terms, or on the material adverse change or force majeure clauses of a contract are sobering and helpful.
Describing due diligence from seven points of view and then domestic and foreign aspects on top of that is a tall order. This informative book is a remarkable, and even entertaining accomplishment...
Packed with Knowledge!
Do Better Deals by Doing Better Due DiligenceThis handbook, Due Dilignece for Global Deal Making, dramatically increases the odds of doing a deal better. Many experts believe that deals are made or broken in the due diligence phase. That is is where you figure out how much to pay, and the valuation is totally dependent on what you find out and what questions you ask.
This book covers it all from strategic imperative to tax rules. It also has an excellent chapter on my own area of expertise, people and organizational fit. I found the section on beginning to evaluate the fit of the corporate cultures particularly helpful. We think the success of true mergers are highly influenced by the cultural fit.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone practicing in this area, regardless of their area of expertise, as it gives them context for all of the other important, areas.

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It's a page-turner; it's a business book: It's both
A Tale of Two Cultures, indeed!
It's a page-turner; it's a business book: It's both.Authors Capodagli and Jackson cheer Rick Roscitt and his maverick AT&T Solutions team as they Dream, Believe, Dare, and Do their way to phenomenal start-up success. AT&T CEO Mike Armstrong is praised for blessing and nourishing the breakaway unit, and he is also fairly and frankly assessed for re-shaping the corporation into a global communications one-stop shop, and then recently dividing it into four parts. Throughout, Capodagli and Jackson are passionate but clear-eyed observers, and masterful teachers, too. This will be no surprise to readers of their previous books THE DISNEY WAY and THE DISNEY WAY FIELDBOOK which established their business-as-show business approach. In the close, overstuffed warehouse of business books today, Capodagli and Jackson are a welcome and invigorating breath of fresh air.

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a MUST read for any business professional
What the future of leadership should be.The command and control style of leadership is coming to an end. For a leader to succeed in the future they will have to rely on their ability to pull together the talents of many individuals. This will be a leader who respects others, who helps coach and develop real talent, who shares success, and who continuously reinvents her/himself. The book gives us hope for a future where we can be productive without sacrificing our humanity.
The books 30 essays by 42 thought leaders are works derived from a passion for helping others. The inspiration for this book comes from an awareness for new leadership made more apparent by the events of 9/11. All of the royalties from this book will go to help the victims of that tragic day.
Partnering The New Face of LeadershipThis book is timely and relevant to today's environmnet. I especially like the idea that all the authors (as if these people need the money) are donating the royalities from sales to the victims of September 11, 2001.

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AN EXHAUSTIVE COMPILATION OF IDEASThis 319-paged book is an exhaustive compilation of both ideas and pieces of advice. Its logical arrangement ensured that all those crucial information remain dynamic. This is an important text for anyone who is into (or tends to go into) any form of corporate alliance or similar association.
Every important ingredient required for building, improving, and nourishing partnerships is in this book. Most of them were illustrated with examples.
This is a sound Management book. It is all about winning. Almost perfect! But I did wish that it provided clues on how to constructively repair a partnership that has been damaged by egoistic tendencies.
New Territory
Practical and Profitable WisdomMy guess is that those in greatest need of this book will encounter the greatest difficulty when attempting to follow Lewis' suggestions. "Trust is at the heart of the knowledge economy....Rather than being a matter of blind faith, trust must be cone step at a time. Further, building trust between organizations is all-encompassing. It involves their people, politics, priorities, cultures, and structures." Organizations become untrustworthy when those within those organizations are untrustworthy. Over the years, all of us have been victimized by fraudulent claims, intentional misrepresentations, corrupt "politics", "a hidden agenda", broken promises, etc. If trust is to be built between organizations, there must be interpersonal as well as intrapersonal relationships based on trustworthiness.
Lewis's book is divided into three parts: Trust Leads to High Performance, Alliances with Key Partner, and Tools for Trust: A Guide for Practitioners. He follows a step-by-step process within each part, providing an abundance of observations, suggestions, and caveats. Who will derive the greatest value from this book? Here are my nominees:
1. Decision-makers who have the authority (not simply the responsibility) for their organization's cultural transformation.
2. Owners/CEOs of start-ups who are committed to building trust as well as sales and profits.
3. Those involved in M&A initiatives whose due diligence includes evaluation of cultural capital as well as material assets.
One of the book's most valuable sections (Chapter VII in the Third Part) summarizes "actions that establish trust-building habits." Note the use of the word "habit." Lewis is quite correct when insisting that time and effort are required to build and then sustain trust. Conversely, trust can be quickly compromised by a single act betrayal.
In this final section, the "trust-building habits" are classified as follows: Trust Conditions; Recruiting, Training, and Rewards; Management Behavior; and Other Activities. Once you have read the book, selected what is most appropriate to your own organization, and then begun the difficult task of implementation, it would be a good idea to re-read Chapter VII in the Third Part. The counsel Lewis provide will help you formulate your own tasks and objectives within the framework of the eight trust conditions and related practices.
If those within your organization are unwilling and/or unable to make a sincere and steadfast commitment to building and then sustaining trust, find another organization. And consider this fact: The companies which dominate their respective industries are the same companies which are rated the best companies to work for. Coincidence? I don't think so...and neither does Lewis.

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Excellent resource - comprehensive made simple!
Smart Partnering WorksI know that I will be using the materials in this book to good effect in my consulting work over the next few years. Thanks to Steve for his hard work in putting together this excellent field-guide to building effective partnerships.
Great Advice for Business People
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Disappointing
A framework for business development
The One Book You Have to ReadIs time spent strategically a bad thing? Is strategy dead? Was time spent on strategy wasted? Does strategic planning have no place in our time-crazed, execution-obsessed New Economy? In 1983, the uber-executive of our age- General Electric Chairman Jack Welch dismantled the company's once heralded planning department. We have empirical evidence that those spending the most on traditional forms of resource-centric 'strategy consulting' [the cerebrally challenged SWOT - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats dance] performed the poorest in the market place. The biggest strategic planner of them all, the Soviet Union appears to have just about finished its pre-Millennial journey from totalitarianism to disintegration. Strategy is not dead, but it had certainly fallen out of favor. Few companies don't have strategic plans. Yet few devote the resources to them they used to. Most disturbing, is that efforts to fix the problem, often had the effect of making things worse - or at least making them bad in a different way. Crusades and reforms intended to reinvent, relaunch and reposition the practice strategy have failed.
Lewis Mumford divided history into epochs characterized by their power sources. Traditional strategy tended to emphasize a focused single line of attack, executed by a single economic enterprise- a clear statement of where, how, and when to compete. Noticeably lacking was the question of 'with whom?' The new power source in the New Economy is the ability to assemble the most resource-rich, market-savvy, technology-gifted, fleet-of-foot, known-and-trusted-by-the-consumer armada of partners. The way you do that is the subject of Digital Deals.
No book can promise infallibility. No book can guarantee that good decisions will be made. This book will help you spend the time you can allocate to strategic thinking more efficaciously. As such, this is not a coffee-table book. This is not a Great-Title-No-Content book. This is not a Good-article-unbelievable-they-stretched-it-into-a-book-book. This most definitely is not a I'll-buy-it-but-I-won't-read-it book. Digital Deals is the new, new thing in strategic thinking. Using the framework in Digital Deals to analyze the ur-protangonists of our evolving New Economy [Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, AOL, AT&T, Amazon] I experienced something akin to the joy that must have accompanied Galileo's use of the telescope to study the heavens or Robert Hooke's (1635-1703) use of the microscope to study bacteria. The tools contained in these pages will let you see new things. It will simplify what heretofore has been an incoherent jumble of pieces parts. This book has helped me understand the players, the deals and the deal rationales of the market I work in - digital security and privacy. As I read the book, I continued to ask myself whether the two Georges were adding words to the existing vocabulary of strategic planning or creating a new grammar into which the old words might be conjugated. There is no doubt that the process of market modeling described within these pages fundamentally changes the types of conversations we will be having as we try to plan our respective futures.

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Insightful!The authors take the concept of partnering farther than many businesspeople will be willing to go when they suggest sharing their business secrets and ideas with everyone from hot start-ups to venerable competitors. But we [...] recommend this short, concise book to high-level executives in need of a partnership primer.
OUTSTANDING!
This ground-breaking book will become a business classic.
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Very good
Inspiring
Intriguing exploration of strategy in a networked world.