If you can borrow, why build or buy? More than ever in today’s climate, where uncertainty, disruptions and accelerating competition bring a need for dynamic organisations, alliances are a smarter, swifter, more reactive and more economical way to pursue strategic opportunities, maximise inherent synergies and gain competitive advantages.

Although alliances often turn out more successful than acquisitions, they are, by their very nature, notoriously difficult to plan, execute and maintain over time. How do you beat the odds and consistently make them work for you? More so, how do you handle the innovations and disruptions brought by digitalisation and the convergence of technologies and industries?

Traditional hierarchical management skills and behaviour will not serve you well in alliances. You need to learn to exercise leadership and provide guidance and achieve influence without authority or clear reporting relationships. This requires a new, often counter-intuitive, mindset of collaboration across organisations.

Key Learning Outcomes

• Understand the contribution alliances can make in developing and implementing your strategy
• Learn to design effective alliances. Acquire specific frameworks in partner selection, network development and alliance design
• Gain insights for bridging and leveraging cultural differences across organisations. Build skills to help effectively address cultural issues, build mutual trust and capture value
• Build cross-organisational alliance implementation skills.
• Develop management approaches for anticipating and resolving tensions and conflicts at every stage in the collaborative process
• Develop methods for effectively sharing knowledge with partners. Understand what knowledge to share, and how, according to your assessment of partners’ expectations and the nature of knowledge