Alliance Advantage: The Art of Creating Value Through Partnering [Hardcover]

Yves L. Doz (Author), Gary Hamel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1998

After a decade of reeningeering and downsizing, many companies are leaner, more efficient, and acutely focused on their core business. Yet today's growth opportunities in global markets and new technologies demand a wider range of skills. More and more, firms must turn to alliances-often with their rivals-to meld the right resources for pursuing new opportunities. However, few managers are accustomed to working with undefined boundaries between collaboration and competition, with the need to combine unfamiliar skills, with networks of interdependent alliances, and with complex value creation strategies. Nor has their experience with traditional joint ventures prepared them for this world of intricate alliance webs. "Alliance Advantage" aims to help today's managers and their companies be more successful in their efforts to create, guide, and thrive with alliance strategies. Most conventional wisdom about alliances has focused on the formal design of bilateral alliances, devoting too little attention to the strategic underpinnings and too little commitment to building relationships. With "Alliance Advantage", strategy experts Yves Doz and Gary Hamel convincingly argue that it is the strength of alliance strategies and the frequently overlooked internal processes that play the decisive role in shaping eventual outcomes. In a fundamentally new perspective on the way alliances are formed and managed, the authors reveal the analysis, processes, and partner interactions that enable allies to meet their strategic goals. Drawing on principles of strategy, organizational design, organizational learning, and collaborative management, this is the definitive resource for both understanding and leveraging the powerful advantages of alliances. "Alliance Advantage" provides both conceptual and practical tools for analyzing the design and performance of alliances. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive guide that will help managers build new collaborations and improve existing ones. Each chapter examines a different aspect of an alliance, from selecting the right partners to minimizing conflicts to determining further commitments. Companies such as Xerox, Boeing, Honda, and Corning, among others, provide examples of successful and unsuccessful partnerships, painting a vivid picture of the conditions that can make or break an alliance. Successful alliances, say Doz and Hamel, require constant attention. With "Alliance Advantage", they offer today's best opportunity to study, understand, and increase the effectiveness of strategic alliances.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Doz and Hamel review the trend toward partnering by corporations of all sizes often prompted by swift changes in technology and global competition. They provide guidelines for what works and what often results in failure when two organizations join forces informally (without contributing capital) to reach a common goal. The purpose of the book is to help managers and their companies be more successful in creating and guiding their strategic alliances. Suggestions are provided for an alliance's management, including assessment of each partner's contribution, the issue of task assignment, and how to measure success. The authors contend that alliances are favored by the avid but cautious learner, often resource poor and ambition rich, who therefore uses resources sparingly and makes a big commitment only when a positive outcome is reasonably certain. At the same time, they characterize acquisitions as options for rich companies that can buy whatever they need. This is a must-read book for anyone involved in or contemplating a strategic alliance. Mary Whaley

About the Author

Yves L. Doz is the Timken Professor of Strategy and Management at INSEAD, France. Gary Hamel is the coauthor, with C.K. Prahalad, of Competing for the Future (HBS Press), an international bestseller with more than 300,000 copies sold.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 316 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press; First Edition edition (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875846165
• ISBN-13: 978-0875846163
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #485,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Written by academics for academics, January 29, 2001

By 

"[e-mail]" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alliance Advantage: The Art of Creating Value Through Partnering (Hardcover)

I have to admit I am thoroughly dissappointed by this book and cannot understand the positive reviews it received from several of the other readers, except that they may be academics. If you are somebody who is only interested in the theory and philosophical background of corporate partnerships, this might be the book you are looking for, but if you are, like myself, a practical doer, who is looking for hands-on insight and knowledge on this topic, you will be deeply dissappointed. Also several of the examples of "showcase" alliances, such as Iridium, are not only outdated, but in fact, bankrupt. Very annoying to read about these "great" alliances, that several months after publishing went belly up. To sum it up, for the practical business professionals among you, I suggest you keep on researching on other books in this genre. Unfortunately, since I didn't read yet any other books on this topic, I cannot offer an alternative book advice.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly strategic work on strategic partnerships, December 7, 1999

By 

Bill Godfrey (Mt Stuart, TAS Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alliance Advantage: The Art of Creating Value Through Partnering (Hardcover)

This is a very important book which should be owned and used by anyone who is in any way concerned with the process of globalisation. The formation of effective strategic alliances lies at the heart of success as a global organisation or in dealing with global majors, and this book provides a great deal of the 'why' and 'how' of building and maintaining robust and mutually beneficial partnerships and alliances.

In addition, careful reading will provide valuable insights into the nature of competition in today's global market economy (which is vastly different from the underlying market economy theory that still informs much national economic policy). Indeed, it goes to the heart of the practicalities of achieving success in globalisation. It provides equally valuable insights into the nature of leadership in a world of networks, skills that are different in kind from those covered by more traditional authors such as Ulrich in his recent Results-Based Leadership.

The sub-title is The Art of Creating Value through Partnering, and I am sure that the word 'Art' was chosen very deliberately. Partnering decisions are among the most important strategic decisions and organisation can make, and the authors, while offering invaluable tools to assist the decision process, make it very clear that this can be no simple 'tick a box' exercise. They place culture, personal attitudes, vision and motivation and learning at the centre of the preconditions for success.

It is an essentially strategic book, written by two leading strategic thinkers, that also reaches down to the nuts and bolts of working through the why, what and how of successful and enduring partnerships and networks of partnership.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delves deeply into the dynamics of strategic alliances., July 18, 1998

By 

[e-mail], Yvette Borcia, Author, St... (Culver City, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alliance Advantage: The Art of Creating Value Through Partnering (Hardcover)

This insightful and detialied work challenges the assumption that the economics of alliance are the same as those of joint venture. The authors explore the effectiveness of strategic alliances and how they can best be managed. This is a highly informative work that is rich in content. It also makes excellent use of charts and illustrations to drive home key points. If alliances is a subject you want to learn a lot about, this book is for you.