Alliance Constellations:
When More Partners Lead to Greater Product Success

Live audio-session with Ben Gomes-Casseres [BIO] Professor, Brandeis University and author, Mastering Alliance Strategy

Many companies now pursue partnerships to accelerate product development innovation and expand market footprint. Going a step further, leaders in the field are creating portfolios of alliances, or “constellations,” for even greater leverage.

According to one of foremost experts on alliance strategy, Ben Gomes-Casseres (noted co-author of Alliance Strategy: A Comprehensive Guide to Design, Management, and Organization) constellations enable firms to:

• Link markets, achieve broader geographic coverage
• Combine diverse skills
• Launch a totally new business
• Create market momentum; persuade customers, suppliers or competitors to adopt a new protocol or technology
• Reduce costs, share risks

But challenges are many:

• Who should be part of the constellation? How many firms? What is the ideal mix?
• How do you deal with internal rivalry that may arise among partners?
• What about competition and imitation by companies outside the constellation?
• How do you manage the constellation to achieve specific objectives? How do you overcome the complexities of multiple cultures, geographies and processes?
• How should you adapt and change the constellation over time? How do you exit?

In a special 75 minute interactive audio-session, Ben Gomes-Casseres will address these issues as well as your own specific questions.

Invite your whole team to join you - the fee is the same as long as it's on one phone line, just put it on speakerphone!

Benjamin Gomes-Casseres
Professor, Brandeis University
email: [email protected] 

Ben Gomes-Casseres is an authority on alliance strategy and management, with a focus on technology companies. He has researched this topic for 20 years, taught them to MBAs and executives, and consulted with major companies in the United States and abroad.

A professor at Brandeis University (Waltham, Mass.), he directs the MBA Program at the Graduate School of International Economics and Finance, and teaches courses in alliance management, competitive strategy, and technology strategy. Previously, he was a professor at the Harvard Business School (1985-1995), where he still teaches in executive programs.

Ben’s new book Mastering Alliance Strategy: A Comprehensive Guide to Design, Management, and Organization, with James Bamford and Michael Robinson, presents state-of-the-art ideas and tools for alliance strategy (www.masteringalliancestrategy.com). His earlier book The Alliance Revolution: The New Shape of Business Rivalry (Harvard University Press, 1996) was the first in-depth study of today’s high-tech alliances and pioneered the concept of alliance “constellations.” Recent articles based on Ben’s work are “Strategy Must Lie at the Heart of Alliances” (Financial Times, October 2000), “Alliances and Risk” (Financial Times, May 2000), “Competing in Constellations: The Case of Fuji Xerox” (Strategy & Business, First Quarter 1997), and “Group Versus Group: How Alliance Networks Compete” (Harvard Business Review, July-August, 1994).

Ben holds the Bachelor of Arts degree from Brandeis (1976; summa cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa), the Master in Public Affairs degree from Princeton University (1978), and the Doctor of Business Administration degree from Harvard University (1985). Before joining academia, he was an economist at the World Bank (1978-1981). A Dutch national born and raised in Curaçao (Netherlands Antilles), he speaks four languages.

For Ben’s expertise and writings, visit www.alliancestrategy.com. This site also offers on-line presentations, web seminars, and other resources for alliance management.