Strategic Alliances: How to Negotiate, Influence and Deliver Results

Whether to beat stiff competition in your market, grow customer satisfaction, or pare your bottom line, strategic alliances are increasingly vital to your organization's success. Yet as many as two-thirds of new alliances fail to live up to expectations. Cisco Systems, widely recognized as a global leader in alliance value creation, has developed an effective framework to identify promising new alliances and then structure alliance relationships to optimize their outcome. Mr. Steinhilber explains the many factors that come into play when deciding whether to proceed with a strategic alliance: the investment required, the competitive landscape, market timing, your organization's own product lines and skill set. And once you've decided to strike the deal, Steinhilber describes the formal and informal mechanisms you need to put in place—to persuade your partner to act for mutual benefit, how to overcome the inevitable rough patches in the relationship, and how to ensure your alliances stay focused on what matters.