The Strongest Link: Forging a Profitable and Enduring Corporate Alliance

Most books on alliances give broad advice or a 50,000 foot view of the topic. This book is different. It provides practical tools. My team now uses the Alliance Framework and Alliance Implementation Program to create and manage our deals.

I have read most of the books on strategic alliances. The Strongest Link is the first book I have found that provides practical, insightful, and detailed help on just what I should do to plan, negotiate, and implement these relationships. It will be immediately useful to anyone from a CEO or other corporate executives to managers who have specific alliance responsibilities. Give a copy to everyone in your company who deals with alliances.

I have been creating alliances in my firm for ten years. This is the best book I have ever seen on the topic.

With 30 years of experience, the authors of this book know what are the mistakes that firms continously repeat when creating an strategic alliance. The book helps understand all the issues that should be regarded when developing a relationship with another firm. The Alliance Framework is a step-by-step group of tools that would allow executives developing a strong and succesful alliance. Also, The Strongest Link explains an implemetation program that should be followed to maintain an alliance on the right track. The Strongest Link could be used as a textbook for any Alliance Management course.

The Strongest Link, a treatise on the management of corporate alliances by George Slowinski and Matt Sagal, has come towards the end of my career. This is too bad, since it is an excellent and comprehensive book on this topic, building on the twenty years of experience that the authors bring to the topic.Based on this extensive experience gained from working on dozens of alliances, they have developed an "Alliance Framework" that covers the topic - from deal conception to the termination clauses. This systematic structure, using a six-step process, covers the process from end to end, and the text is full of useful advice on almost every aspect of success and potential failure. Given the extensive experience of the authors, they have seen just about everything that could and does happen, and developed scenarios to both exploit opportunities and counter challenges.The authors admit that "creating and managing strategic alliances is an art" - but to help the "struggling artist" they have crafted an excellent how-to book. Despite their protestations that their Alliance Framework is "not a step by step check list", any alliance manager could do much worse than follow its advice to the letter. The book is not an easy read. It is not to be skimmed on a flight to Tokyo. Rather the serious alliance manager will lock themselves in their office with pen and pad, and pour over the book page by page, to get the full benefit of the wealth of experience that the authors bring to the subject.The book could benefit from more detail on individual deals. While the authors have distilled the essence of their multiple experiences, the readers could better learn from individual and practical examples. Although confidentiality is always as issue, whatever can be done describe real examples beyond the Battelle alliance, would significantly enhance the value of the book.