
Focusing on these priorities can help partnerships thrive and create more value than they would otherwise. And they are willing to change things up if needed. They emphasize accountability within and across partner companies, and they use metrics to gauge success. Strong partners set a clear foundation for business relationships and nurture them.

The reality is: successful partnerships don’t just happen. In our work helping executive teams set up and navigate complex partnerships, we have witnessed firsthand how these problems crop up, and we have observed the different ways companies deal with them. the main ones were: partners’ disagreements on the central objectives for the relationship, poor communication practices among partners, poor governance processes, and, when market or other circumstances change, partners’ inability to identify and quickly make the changes needed for the relationship to succeed (exhibit). A separate, follow-up survey in 2018 showed that 73 percent of participants expect their companies to increase the number of large partnerships they engage in. Sixty-eight percent said they expect their organizations to increase the number of joint ventures or large partnerships they participate in over the next five years. The last time we polled executives on their perceived risks for strategic partnerships, 1 Observations collected in McKinsey’s 2015 survey of more than 1,250 executives. Of course, the perennial problems associated with managing business partnerships don’t go away either-particularly as companies increasingly strike relationships with partners in different sectors and geographies. And the better companies get at managing individual relationships, the more likely it is that they will become “partners of choice” and able to build entire portfolios of practical and value-creating partnerships. The business environment becomes-for instance, as new technologies emerge or as innovation cycles get faster-the more such relationships make sense. Companies regularly seek partners with complementary capabilities to gain access to new markets and channels, share intellectual property or infrastructure, or reduce risk. The two companies are collaborating to develop, roast, and distribute coffee products under the Starbucks brand.Partnerships never go out of style.

Hollywood studios combining to fight internet piracy.Google and NASA developing Google Earth.

BMW and Toyota co-operate on research into hydrogen fuel cells and ultra-lightweight materials.Vodafone & Telefónica agreed to share their mobile network.a joint-research project to share the fixed costs of higher risk research. Joint ventures are becoming common as firms want to benefit from collaborative work in reaching a mutually agreed strategic target e.g.

With a joint venture, the businesses remain separate in legal terms.
