Jeff & Jan's Blog

If you missed ASAP’s Netcast web seminar, It’s in the DNA…Right?, presented by Ard-Pieter de Man, Dave Luvison and Jack Pearson, you can watch it on ASAP’s newly revised website, that is if you are a member. (If you aren’t a member, we encourage you to join.) Jan and I thought the discussion of their research findings was quite good – …

In our conversations with alliance managers over the past several months we keep hearing that many of them have taken on a new job responsibility – managing an excavation. No, they’re not taking over the supervision of a construction site. They have been tasked with compiling a comprehensive inventory of ALL the alliances and other strategic collaborations their company has …

In a recent column in The New York Times, Tom Friedman commented that “The term ‘outsourcing’ is out of date. There is no more ‘out’ anymore. Firms can and will seek the best leaders and talent to achieve their goals anywhere in the world.” He’s right of course. As 2011 winds down, it’s no longer news that alliances and other …

Last year at this time we were getting concerned about alliance management surviving as a profession. We kept hearing about groups being downsized and left out of key decisions. Alliance portfolios grew, but not surprisingly, the resources to manage them weren’t keeping pace. Senior executives often questioned the value of alliance management.
Over the past several months, we’re sensing a new …

The May 8th edition of the Boston Sunday Globe featured a page 1 article titled “Collaboration: The Mother of Invention” .
The article makes the point that “Boston produces an outsized number of scientific breakthroughs. Researchers working side by side is a big reason why.” This isn’t the first article to stress that better science comes through collaborative work. While there …

As a writer, I carefully choose each and every word. I find satisfaction in conveying complex and sometimes abstract concepts in ways that make intuitive sense. Jeff and I have long attempted to apply this guiding principle to collaboration – now one of the most talked about trends in management. So it troubles us that many business people are getting …

For a while now I’ve had the feeling that too many people simply don’t know what alliance managers do. I guess it’s okay if some people don’t understand their critical, strategic role. However, what isn’t okay is if major consulting firms that regularly advise companies on strategy and organization design don’t know.
Here’s a case in point. I just finished reading …

Several years ago, an IBM study found that across the globe, CEOs recognized that collaboration was essential for future competitiveness. However, despite these aspirations, actual implementation was much lower. Citing a lack of skills, they described partnering as “theoretically easy, but practically hard to do.”
In our conversations with people in multiple industries and around the globe – and with the …

Being an alliance manager is one of the most strategic and essential jobs in any organization today. Lately, we’ve been hearing from a lot of people that the scope of their alliance management responsibilities and the number of relationships they manage is increasing – and they aren’t getting additional resources to work with. With this increasing challenge comes the need …

I just finished reading the IBM Institute for Business Value’s latest report on Collaborative Innovation: Partnering for Success in Life Sciences. What was great to read was that “the seven pharmaceutical companies that biotech firms have most wanted to work with over the past four years are also those with the strongest financial records.” The report goes on to point …