As business becomes increasingly complex and globalised, and innovations remove old competitive advantages, traditional firm-to-firm rivalry is being replaced by network-vs.-network competition.
Strategic alliances have increasingly been formed as offensive or defensive weapons over the past decade: but they seem to be dispiritingly unlikely to be able to deliver the goods. So why is this?
The authors agree with the consensus that partner selection is key, and produce a new management selection process and a dynamic evaluation tool to identify potential industries and firms as target partners.
The authors point out that partner selection must link back to overall corporate objectives, and the critical success factors of the alliance and the partners align with those of the focal firm – otherwise, there will be trouble from the outset.
The selection tool – which can be used at industry, segment or individual firm level – weighs and rates the similarity of critical success factors, and is designed to be dynamic, and capture how changes in factors will modify the suitability of potential partners. All this is illustrated by applying process and tool to partner selection in the on-line segment of the global travel industry.

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