Forming Ties That Will Free Your Firm

Strategic alliances provide opportunities to strengthen your market position, gain new capabilities and resources, and enable you to grow and expand during difficult times. Many large, highly resourced companies already know this and are leveraging it to their advantage. But how can a small firm with fewer resources obtain and manage a high-performing alliance portfolio? Getting the alliance portfolio you dreamed of, and then managing it well over time, is not as impossible as it may seem, provided that you act early, make multiple approaches to various partners, give sequential attention to each, and generally avoid alliances with competitors.