Building, Leading, and Managing Strategic Alliances: How to Work Effectively and Profitably with Partner Companies

This book is awesome! It represents a senior executive view on alliances, yet provides a step-by-step process to lead and manage alliances.With the conditions of the global economy dictating "Adaptive" enterprises, companies will be heavily relying on alliances to extend their core competency reach. This book provides the insights to successfully execute alliances - something that only the best of companies are doing today. It is a must read for anyone involved with alliances.

With Jeff Hook, Fred A. Kuglin makes a practical analysis about the conclusion and management of alliances during their lifecycle. Kuglin provides a framework to determine the need for an alliance that on its turn provides a roadmap to determine what type of alliances makes sense. Kuglin gives his readers a useful outline to draft the letter of intent, definitive alliance agreement, alliance business plan, and non-disclosure agreement. Each of these outlines is particularly useful for his readers who have already had the opportunity to take an in-depth look at these documents. To his credit, Kuglin repeatedly emphasizes the importance of involving internal and/or external counsels in drafting these documents from the beginning. Kuglin shares his experience with his readers about the working of alliances in different industries such as aeronautics, transportation, and telecommunications. Furthermore, Kuglin provides a roadmap that allows his audience to reassess the validity of keeping an alliance alive over time or not. Knowing when to disband/adapt an existing alliance is as important as making a new alliance. Finally, Kuglin builds on his expertise to define the critical success factors in establishing alliances and uses both General Electric and Cisco Systems of his "Hall of Fame" to illustrate them. In a second edition of Strategic Alliances, Kuglin could perhaps further elaborate on the first mover advantage in making an alliance or not. In their excellent Will and Vision, Gerard J. Tellis and Peter N. Golder debunk the myth of the first mover advantage by demonstrating that pioneers are rarely rewarded for their efforts at the end of the day. Is this empirical observation of both Tellis and Golder also true for the conclusion and management of alliances over their lifetime?