Most of the examples of strategic alliances and partnership I use in my work are examples from the corporate world. Large organizations that work together with large organizations. These examples are known for mainly two reasons: the corporations publish press releases about their alliance and the press picks them up. As a consequence, more people pick it up and follow the alliance. Academia will jump in and do their research on these alliances as well. If they fail the hard way, the not so graceful way, the press will pick them up again. After all, large brands in a large clash make for a nice news story.
On the other hand, fewer alliance examples are known from Small and Medium Enterprises. I guess that this is because these smaller companies less often do press releases and as such, they get less media attention. Failing alliances can be painful: people involved are happy with the fact that the larger world does not know about it.
Recently I had a couple of instances where people spoke to me about alliances for Small and Medium Enterprises. They were either looking for examples or for adjusted methodologies that could work in this realm. The general expectation is that Small and Medium Enterprises create alliances and partnerships in a faster and agiler way than large corporates do. Hence, do they use a different methodology or a fast path through the alliance life cycle? If so, what does that mean for the time it takes to create alliances and possibly for the success ratio of these alliances?
Interesting questions, yet with no answer and no proper example cases.
Time to do some research!
> and I would love your help with it!
Do you know examples of alliances with Small and Medium Enterprises?
I am looking for both success stories as failures. Examples of equal sized companies working together and examples of the “David and Goliath” type of partnerships: small(er) companies working with large companies. Share your examples through the form below.
Based on your input I will research a number of the examples provided. I will try to find what worked and what did not work and turn them into case descriptions that I will share.
Please provide as much information as you know about the example you are submitting. At least include the company names and the area where they are working together.
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