Strategic Partnerships

Unlocking competitive advantage through strategic partnerships

In the ever-evolving world of business, company strategies face relentless threats, be they from rampant imitation or substitute business models. How do you navigate these challenges? In many instances, you cannot rely on your company alone to sustain competitive advantage. Rather, you need to look to an ecosystem of external strategic partners who can help your company along the way.

However, that is easier said than done. Questions abound: How do you search, screen, and select strategic partners? What is the right structure to establish a strategic partnership? How do you start up the strategic partnership to maximize trust? What if the partnership goes sour? How do you manage conflict? Finally, how do you steer a portfolio of strategic partnerships for best practice sharing?

IMD’s Strategic Partnerships program is designed to guide you through these complexities. It will help you create an ecosystem of external strategic alliances to maximize your competitive advantage.

Using your own business context as a live case study, you will identify and screen potential partners. By putting the right processes in place, you can ensure that strategic partnerships are structured to your benefit, to borrow missing capabilities, adopt best practices, and enter new markets cost-effectively.

By developing mutual trust, you will leverage stable, fruitful strategic partnerships that also mitigate risk from competitors or imitators.