ABSTRACT

Academics and practitioners consider alliance launch critical to the long-term success of an alliance. This chapter explores in detail the challenges associated with alliance launch and focuses on drivers that contribute to a successful start-up of an alliance arrangement. It presents a framework to guide managerial decision-making. The alliance launch stage depicts the bridge between alliance formation, with its focus on deal-making, and alliance management, with a focus on extracting the collaborative value. A critical objective during the alliance launch is to secure alignment between the alliance strategy and partners' interests, ambitions and plans. A systematic process and insight in the drivers for alliance execution is necessary in order to effectively deal with the challenges inherently tied to launching an alliance. A successful alliance launch depends on the interplay between a set of several attributes. The chapter concludes with a summary and a case illustration.