Managing Strategic Alliances and Partnerships

Introduction

Successful strategic alliances and partnerships require a strategic vision, a balanced relationship, and brokerage skills to bring collaborating parties together to contribute to their maximum.

This course will focus on advances in management theory and practice of strategic alliances, business networks, and collaborative ventures. The Managing Strategic Alliances & Partnerships training course is designed to upgrade the knowledge and skills of managers, to enable them to excel in collaborative situations. Through this training course, managers and executives will learn how to manage long-term strategic alliances and partnerships, how to optimize the interest of their organization, and how to facilitate collaborative decision-making for future growth.

Course Objectives

• Develop awareness, knowledge, and skills – how to gain competitive advantage through business networks, strategic alliances, and partnerships.
• Develop frameworks for building collaborative advantage.
• Enable delegates to gain insights into the successful design and implementation of business partnerships.
• Complement management skills with advanced collaborative techniques.
• Build cultural awareness of how to overcome barriers to collaboration.

Course Outlines

Day 1: Initiating Alliances and Partnerships

• Introduction to the strategic alliance life cycle.
• Motives for collaboration.
• Selecting partners and forming business relationships.
• How to measure compatibility and partner fit.
• Joint ventures, supplier networks, strategic alliances, and public-private partnerships.

 Day 2: Structuring Collaborative Work 

• Types of strategic alliances and partnerships.
• Cross-border management structures.
• Creating cross-border virtual teams.
• Motivating and brokerage for collaboration.
• Discover a joint perspective and partner differences.
• Collaborative strategies and execution.

Day 3: Managing Shared Resources and Value Co-Creation 

• Distinguishing between bilateral and multi-lateral collaborations.
• Managing complex relationships.
• Sharing resources and optimization of outcomes.
• Upstream and downstream value co-creation.
• Negotiating and managing contingencies.
• Contracts, renewals, trust, and lock-in effects.
• Communication and interfaces between partners.

Day 4: Designing Open Innovation Platforms 

• Coordination and control in collaborative settings.
• Facilitating networking.
• Public-private partnerships and multi-stakeholder engagement.
• Open access and open innovation – procedures and practices for shared access.
• Regulation and governance of platforms for shared resources.
• Maximising learning and developing absorptive capacity.

Day 5: Performance Evaluation and Learning from Strategic Alliance Partners 

• Assessing the advantages and disadvantages of partnerships.
• Overcoming barriers to collaboration and conflict resolution.
• Managing continuous improvement.
• Balancing across coordination costs and benefits.
• Creating high-performance strategic partnerships.
• Examples of strategic alliance success and failure.
• Alliance termination, exit clause, and buy-out formulae.