Emerging Partnership Strategy at Sandia National Laboratories

Research has linked the ability to partner and use alliances as a competitive tool as a critical component of agility. Companies that are able to quickly couple and uncouple themselves with other entities as needed demonstrate agile characteristics of reconjigurability, modulari~ and scalability. The case presented demonstrates these agile characteristics as well as methods employed to reach the stated objective of “strategic partnering. ” Sandia National Labs demonstrates a pervasive commitment to partnering. Internally, Sandia has redesigned many of its processes to make them more efticient as well as to gain agility and the ability to partner more effectively. This can especially be seen in certain human resource activities including visioning, staflng and the use of augmented or contingent workers.