The competitive advantage of strategic alliances

In today's environment, creating sustainable value for customers and shareholders requires creating effective alliances. Alliances are essential building blocks for companies to achieve stronger and more effective market presence. Alliances are now a fact of life for business, an important piece of current operations as well as future strategy. This article provides an important and useful perspective on strategic alliances. Approaches, examples, models, and other tools are discussed to develop a deeper understanding of how competitive advantage of the alliance can be achieved. The article shows that there are many ways to build a competitive advantage which depend a lot on management of the alliance. Some firms place alliance management under a centralized organization, while others prefer to distribute responsibility for alliances across all business units. Furthermore, the competitive advantage of a strategic alliance also depends on its organizational and strategic circumstances.