While industry titans such as Google and Disney can seem like singular forces in the marketplace, their success is due in part to their ability to collaborate with other companies and foster key partnerships. Whether you’re a leader at a multinational corporation or a small organization, strategic partnerships can help your business enter new markets and develop more innovative products. In this course, partnership strategy expert Ben Gomes-Casseres spells out how to succeed with strategic partnerships, sharing practical tips and tools that can help both beginners and experienced managers create value and manage collaboration. Ben covers how to assess the capabilities of potential partners to find the best strategic fit. He also steps through how to set partnership terms, resolve conflicts, and more.

Topics include:

• What is a strategic partnership?
• Keys to success in partnerships
• Why partnerships are tricky to manage
• Five steps to a good partnership
• Determining how many partners you need
• Setting partnership terms
• Managing partnership life
• Earning your share

• Introduction
• 1. Partnership Principles
• 2. Partnership Tools
• Conclusion

Benjamin Gomes-Casseres is an expert in partnership strategy and a professor at Brandeis University.

Ben Gomes-Casseres has worked on partnership strategies for thirty years, as a researcher, speaker, and advisor. His newest book is Remix Strategy: The Three Laws of Business Combinations (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015). It explains how entrepreneurial firms innovate by “remixing” their assets with those of partner firms, using business combinations that range from alliances and ecosystems to M&A. Ben is a strategy professor and MBA director at Brandeis University (since 1995) and previously was at Harvard Business School (1985–1995). Prior to that, he was an economist at the World Bank. He has published five books and many articles and case studies on the management of business combinations. Ben works with companies seeking to create value from external resources and to improve the way they manage business partnerships. He holds degrees from Harvard, Princeton, and Brandeis. A native of Curaçao, he speaks four languages. His work is at www.remixstrategy.com.