Joint ventures

Collaboration between competitors is in fashion. General Motors and Toyota assemble automobiles, Siemens and Philips develop semiconductors, Canon supplies photocopiers to Kodak, France’s Thomson and Japan’s JVC manufacture videocassette recorders. But the spread of what we call “competitive collaboration”—joint ventures, outsourcing agreements, product licensings, cooperative research—has triggered unease about the long-term consequences. A strategic alliance […]

Academic–industry alliances have been around long enough to sprout their own ivy, yet these staples of technology innovation have undergone little innovation themselves. Now a few companies are pioneering ways to get more out of university research. One particularly successful model comes from Porsche, which has brought academic brainpower inside. A few years ago, Porsche, […]

The age of proprietary information systems is coming to an end, and the age of shared services is dawning. Don’t panic. There’s a pragmatic way to make the change pay off for your company.

Traditionally, business viewed the social sector as a dumping ground for spare cash, obsolete equipment, and tired executives. But today smart companies are approaching it as a learning laboratory.

The Idea: Fadi Ghandour has built one of the most successful entrepreneurial enterprises to emerge from the Arab world, Aramex International , overcoming rejections, cash-flow crises, and naysayers in every country where he tried to do business.

In approaching the prospect of a joint venture in the People's Republic of China, foreign executives often plunge ahead with insufficient attention to...

Three priorities to help lay the groundwork for success.

Market leaders maximize returns by actively shaping - and reshaping - their partnership portfolios.

I’ll never forget my 25th Harvard Business School reunion, when Professor Howard Stevenson gave a lecture titled “Make Your Own Luck.” To a packed room he revealed this truth: If you want big success, build a business that responds to big trends. When he prompted us, the audience volunteered the biggest ones in the world: […]

Techniques that can help you seal a deal may end up torpedoing the relationship when it’s time to put the deal into operation.

Don’t pigeonhole yourself.

Strategy is the art of creating value. It provides the intellectual frameworks, conceptual models, and governing ideas that allow a company’s managers to identify opportunities for bringing value to customers and for delivering that value at a profit. In this respect, strategy is the way a company defines its business and links together the only […]

They're hoping that they make more sense together than apart.

Even alliances with outside partners benefit from a little friction.

Joint ventures are common methods of managing projects that involve different countries. Managers need to consider whether a shared management or dominant...

Joint AI ventures can help them keep up with giants and startups alike.

Sony's chairman addresses the present deterioration of U.S.-Japan relations and offers his view of how the two countries can patch up their differences...

Rewarding individual performance is the way of the business world, but there are rare exceptions. At executive search firm Egon Zehnder International, seniority and companywide results determine pay. The company’s founder explains how this unconventional compensation system works—and why.

Outsourcing has become strategic—yet many executives remain unprepared. A new era of capability sourcing will trigger organizational redesign and require a new set of managerial skills.

For generations, Procter & Gamble generated most of its phenomenal growth by innovating from within--building global research facilities and hiring the...