After a decade of reeningeering and downsizing, many companies are leaner, more efficient, and acutely focused on their core business. Yet today's growth opportunities in global markets and new technologies demand a wider range of skills. More and more, firms must turn to alliances-often with their rivals-to meld the right resources for pursuing new opportunities. However, few managers are accustomed to working with undefined boundaries between collaboration and competition, with the need to combine unfamiliar skills, with networks of interdependent alliances, and with complex value creation strategies. Nor has their experience with traditional joint ventures prepared them for this world of intricate alliance webs. Alliance Advantage aims to help today's managers and their companies be more successful in their efforts to create, guide, and thrive with alliance strategies. Most conventional wisdom about alliances has focused on the formal design of bilateral alliances, devoting too little attention to the strategic underpinnings and too little commitment to building relationships. With Alliance Advantage, strategy experts Yves Doz and Gary Hamel convincingly argue that it is the strength of alliance strategies and the frequently overlooked internal processes that play the decisive role in shaping eventual outcomes. In a fundamentally new perspective on the way alliances are formed and managed, the authors reveal the analysis, processes, and partner interactions that enable allies to meet their strategic goals. Drawing on principles of strategy, organizational design, organizational learning, and collaborative management, this is the definitive resource for both understanding and leveraging the powerful advantages of alliances. Alliance Advantage provides both conceptual and practical tools for analyzing the design and performance of alliances. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive guide that will help managers build new collaborations and improve existing ones. Each chapter examines a different aspect of an alliance, from selecting the right partners to minimizing conflicts to determining further commitments. Companies such as Xerox, Boeing, Honda, and Corning, among others, provide examples of successful and unsuccessful partnerships, painting a vivid picture of the conditions that can make or break an alliance. Successful alliances, say Doz and Hamel, require constant attention. With Alliance Advantage, they offer today's best opportunity to study, understand, and increase the effectiveness of strategic alliances.

Companies made more than 42,000 alliances over the past decade worldwide, many of which failed to deliver strong results. This book explains why and how you can seize the benefits from your business’s network of alliances with customers, suppliers and competitors. This network can provide three key advantages: · superior information · better cooperation · increased power Network Advantage shows how awareness of these three advantages can help align your portfolio of alliances with your corporate strategy to maximize advantages from existing networks and to position your business as an industry leader. This book is written by three leading authorities in the field of organizational management who work with many international corporate clients. Based on groundbreaking research and illustrative cases, it provides practical tools to help you think strategically about reconfiguring your alliances and partnerships. For business executives, consultants, and executive MBAs who want to get the most advantage from the combined power of their alliance portfolios, Network Advantage offers in-depth, practical guidance. Make it your first strategic connection to gaining competitive advantage! Companies’ connections to other firms—their network of alliances—matter for economic success. In this practical, jargon-free, evidence-based book, three experienced scholar/educators provide practical tools to understand your company’s network positioning and what to do to build webs of relationships that provide competitive advantage and economic value. —Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and co-author of The Knowing-Doing Gap. The book, Network Advantage, presents compelling ideas and is a must-read. It articulates three different perspectives to think about a firm’s network advantage and shows how a firm can maximize the value of its alliance network. The book is filled with theoretical and practical insights on the topic and offers captivating case studies to illustrate its key points. It is fun to read. I highly recommend this book. —W. Chan Kim, The BCG Chair Professor of INSEAD and the Co-director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute In this eminently researched book, the authors show how executives and entrepreneurs alike can unlock the value of alliances. And the book comes with some "secrets" to success that most managers overlook. Every CEO, executive and entrepreneur who are collaborating with other firms ought to read this book. —Morten T. Hansen, Professor at University of California at Berkeley, author of Collaboration and co-author of Great by Choice. Don’t compete alone! “Network Advantage” provides a fresh perspective on how all firms can benefit from their alliances and partnerships. The authors seamlessly integrate academic research and real life examples into a practical step by step guide for unleashing the power, information and cooperation advantages available in networks. A must read for thoughtful executives and entrepreneurs alike. —Stein Ove Fenne, President, Tupperware U.S. & Canada Having the "right" business network is everything for a company's success in Asia and worldwide. With its rich cases and practical tools, this book is an indispensable guide for a thoughtful executive on how to design, build and manage a network that will make your firm globally competitive. —Yong-Kyung Lee, Former CEO of Korean Telecom, Member of the Korean National Assembly. Alliances and Partnerships, in their various formats and guises, are the bridges that allow businesses to thrive in their ecosystems by leveraging each other's strengths. The authors show how those bridges, when used appropriately, can help your firm create an alliance network to enhance your business power. The book contains many examples and models to help you shape your own alliance strategy in a world of ever increasing co-opetition. —Ricardo T. Dias, Strategic Alliances Director, Hewlett Packard (HP) Software, Asia Pacific & Japan

More than we ever anticipated, alliances among firms are changing the way business is conducted, particularly in the global, high-technology sector. The reasons are clear: companies must increasingly pool their capabilities to succeed in ever more complex and rapidly changing businesses. But the consequences for managers and for the economy have so far been underestimated. In this new book, Benjamin Gomes-Casseres presents the first in-depth account of the new world of business alliances and shows how collaboration has become part of the very fabric of modern competition. Alliances, he argues, create new units of competition that do battle with one another and with traditional single firms. The flexible capabilities of these multi-firm constellations give them advantages over single firms in certain contexts, offsetting the advantage of a single firm's unified control. When managed effectively, alliances can strengthen a firm's competitive advantage and narrow the gap between leading firms and second-tier players. This often results in intensified rivalry, and the competition within an industry is transformed. Alliances often spread swiftly through an industry as firms jockey for advantage. Yet the very spread of alliances increases their costs and poses new limits on their use. Gomes-Casseres concludes that firms need to manage their constellations to enhance collaboration within their groups, while raising what he calls "barriers to collaboration" for rivals. These ideas are developed and illustrated through original case studies of alliances among U.S., Japanese, and European firms in electronics and computers, including Xerox, IBM, and Fujitsu as well as other small and large companies. The book should be of interest to business academics, managers, and general readers concerned with contemporary capitalism.

To survive and thrive in the competition, firms have strived to achieve greater supply chain collaboration to leverage the resources and knowledge of suppliers and customers. Internet based technologies, particularly interorganizational systems, further extend the firms’ opportunities to strengthen their supply chain partnerships and share real-time information to optimize their operations. Supply Chain Collaboration: Roles of Interorganizational Systems, Trust, and Collaborative Culture explores the nature and characteristics, antecedents, and consequences of supply chain collaboration from multiple theoretical perspectives. Supply Chain Collaboration: Roles of Interorganizational Systems, Trust, and Collaborative Culture conceptualizes supply chain collaboration as seven interconnecting elements including information sharing, incentive alignment, goal congruence, decision synchronization, resource sharing, as well as communication and joint knowledge creation. These seven components define the occurrence of collaborative efforts and allow us to explain supply chain collaboration more precisely. Collaborative advantages are also divided into five components to capture the joint competitive advantages and benefits among supply chain partners. The definitions and measures developed here examine some central issue surrounding supply chain development but this is also followed up with real-life managerial practicalities. This balance of theory and practical application makes Supply Chain Collaboration: Roles of Interorganizational Systems, Trust, and Collaborative Culture a strong resource for industry practitioners and researchers alike.

No other country has devised a grand strategy for managing China’s rising economic and military power as deliberately or successfully as Japan. Seeking to counter Chinese ambitions toward regional hegemony, Japan has taken an increasingly assertive role in East Asia and the world. During the tenure of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, the country pursued closer security cooperation with the United States and other democracies, established a more centralized national defense system, and advanced rules and norms to preserve the open regional order in the Indo-Pacific that is crucial to its prosperity and survival—all while managing an important economic relationship with China. In Line of Advantage, Michael J. Green provides a groundbreaking and comprehensive account of Japan’s strategic thinking under Abe. He explains the foundational logic and the worldview behind this approach, from key precedents in Japanese history to the specific economic, defense, and diplomatic priorities shaping contemporary policy toward China, the United States, the two Koreas, and the Indo-Pacific region. Drawing on two decades of access to Abe and other Japanese political, military, and business leaders, Green provides an insider’s perspective on subjects such as how Japan pursued competition with China without losing the benefits of economic cooperation. Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Japan’s new active role, Line of Advantage sheds new light on a period with profound implications for the future of U.S. competition with China and international affairs in Asia more broadly.

"If a partner understands better the role alliances play in business strategy, is able to engage in a strategic conversation around the needs for and benefits derived from an alliance, and has a more sophisticated approach to partner selection, there should be fewer conflicts down the road." —from Alliance Competence Dell Computers revolutionized the PC market when the company formed an alliance between Intel and FedEx. Through this partnership, Dell was able to mass-customize and deliver computers faster than most of its competitors. With monthly losses around $1 million, USAir decided to join forces with British Airways. Through this alliance, USAir became a global player in the airline industry, and gave both companies the ability to save millions in annual costs by incorporating joint purchasing of services, fuel, aircraft, and more. Strategic alliances are becoming more and more essential to the viability of a company. These alliances are pervasive throughout the corporate landscape and have a big impact on the way business is conducted across the globe. Written by strategy experts from the University of Virginia's prestigious Darden School, Alliance Competence combines the latest research and case studies to explore the key aspects necessary to develop a successful alliance. Enhanced by a five-year study of global companies, this book offers unique insights about building the foundations of alliance competence. These competencies provide firms with a source of sustainable competitive advantage that will help them compete more successfully in global markets. Through actual "war stories" the problems and challenges that alliances tend to face are revealed, as well as concrete suggestions for managing through the evolutionary cycle. After examining all the research available, the authors introduce a process they've developed called The No Blame Review? (NBR). This collaborative, nonjudgmental process helps alliances constructively confront times when the alliance seems off track. The NBR creates an objective, nonthreatening, and non-value-laden opportunity for alliance managers and strategic sponsors on both sides to raise, investigate, and review serious issues. It also allows partners to check the alliance's vital signs and to make a determination that all systems are in alignment. This process provides the most positive approach to conflict resolution. The insight, real-world examples, and research featured in Alliance Competence will give you the tools and diagnostics necessary for locating potential allies and creating a successful alliance. "A thoughtful, experience-based exploration of the subtleties and nuances that must be addressed when entering into complex alliance relationships. Required reading!" —Lawrence M. Small, President and COO, Fannie Mae "From global service enterprises to e-business start-ups, firms in the future will win or lose by how well they manage their alliance strategies. This book is a gold mine of valuable perspectives, useful advice, and practical checklists that will help you tilt the game in your favor. Read it and, more importantly, use it to develop your own alliance competence." —Benjamin Gomes-Casseres, Director, MBA Program, Brandeis University and author, The Alliance Revolution

In the emerging new collaborative economic order, innovation is achieved by an integrated process of collaboration between policymakers, business and society. Often, the focus for this collaboration is at a regional level. Creating Collaborative Advantage examines the trends in innovation policy that reflect this new thinking and regional focus. This book develops the view that collaboration is one of many ways of organising a competitive economy. It asks how, when and where collaboration is a meaningful way of organisation. It explores collaboration at business level, business networks between companies, and a wider collaborative coalition between business and public authorities. It is not a manual, a 'how to do it', because there is no single straightforward universal model to replace current orthodoxy on economic development, but it will enable people to learn. The contributors to this unique book have been involved with the implementation of some of the most outstanding examples of collaborative approaches, it therefore gives an outstanding picture of diversity, inbuilt comparisons and contrast, and debate between the cases. The co-authors give their understanding of these issues, but the book tries to establish some common understandings and bring the concept of collaboration to a larger audience, and to increase interest in a field which requires further exploration. Policy makers, advisers and administrators at all levels of government, those involved in research and development, and business leaders and educators, will find this book invaluable, together with readers having an academic interest in the subject of innovation.

Erfolgreiche Unternehmensallianzen sind heute für viele Unternehmen absolut wichtig, wenn es darum geht, sich einen Wettbewerbsvorteil zu sichern. "Mastering Alliance Strategy" ist ein umfassender Leitfaden zum Thema Allianzstrategie. Er entwirrt die haarigsten Themen rund um das Allianzmanagement und erläutert die aktuellsten Gedanken, Ideen und Praktiken für eine effektive Nutzung von Partnerschaften. Ob absoluter Anfänger oder erfahrener Allianzexperte, ob Fachmann im Bereich Unternehmensentwicklung, Linienmanager oder Führungskraft - hier lernen Sie, Allianzen besser zu verstehen und auszunutzen. Die Autoren zeigen, dass das Erfolgsgeheimnis nicht nur in den Feinheiten einer Vereinbarung liegt, sondern auch in der Strategie und Organisation hinter dieser Vereinbarung. Aus ihrer langjährigen Forschungsarbeit und Berichterstattung präsentieren sie hier Ideen und Tools zu den vier Kernelementen einer effektiven Allianzstrategie: Planen der Allianz und Entwerfen der Vereinbarung, Managen der Allianz, sobald sie gegründet ist, Vorteile ziehen aus einer Konstellation von Allianzen, Aufbau einer internen Allianzfähigkeit Verständlich geschrieben. Mit anschaulichem Beispielmaterial. "Mastering Alliance Strategy" - die ultimative Pflichtlektüre für alle Unternehmensstrategen und Führungskräfte.

This book picks Cisco as an example to propose a framework of ambidextrous integration of innovation and operation, which is the key to the success of global companies along their evolutions, especially for those technology companies. The authors try to find how the company combines active innovation and efficient operation for its sustainable development. On the basis of comprehensive analysis of the strategic leadership, change management, innovation system, M&As, IT-enabled value chains, collaboration, etc., in Cisco, as well as the interviews with Cisco staff, this book shows that management practices shape the balance of internal-external resources for explorative-exploitative innovations. IT strategies and implementation enable efficient operations when innovations are identified and justified in the leading company. Managerial insights for sustainable competitiveness can be gained from Cisco practices in this book. The companion of the book, Huawei: From Catching up to Lead, telling another growth path of technology company in China by similar framework.