If you are teaching inter-firm cooperation to MBA or Exec Ed audiences, you may find useful a new book that we just published: "Network Advantage: How to Unlock Value from Your Alliances and Partnerships" (Wiley/Jossey-Bass).
Following up on our previous post to this list, we got the publisher's permission to post a free chapter on the website. It can be accessed by visiting networkadvantage.org.
If you missed our last week's post, please read on...
The book is written for learners interested in innovation, strategic alliances, partnerships and competitive advantage. It can be used as a part of a core strategy course, a corporate strategy course, a course on innovation or a course on managing partnerships and strategic alliances.
The book takes a distinct network perspective on competitive advantage and illustrates several key concepts:
* The impact of individual alliances, partnerships and their portfolios on the firms' competitive advantage
* The role of complementarity and compatibility between partners for the formation of successful alliances and partnerships
* Differential impact of the "hub and spoke" alliance portfolios and "integrated" alliance portfolios on competitive advantage. The two portfolio types represent inter-organizational networks rich in structural holes and dense inter-organizational networks, respectively
* The role of organizational status in the attainment of competitive advantage
* Should the firm build its own alliance portfolio or join a portfolio built by another firm
* How to improve information flows inside the firm to attain competitive advantage from alliances and partnerships
Most chapters introduce tools that participants can use to develop collaboration strategy for their businesses. The tools are compiled at the end of the book.
You can find more information about the book at http://www.networkadvantage.org, including a link to a recent review by The Financial Times. The website has a section for management educators where you find our suggested pedagogical approach and chapter summaries.
The book is instantly available in the e-reader format around the world, and currently ships from Amazon.UK and Wiley.UK. You can pre-order the book on Amazon.COM for the U.S. market. The ordering information is on the book's website.
We hope you find this book useful.
Henrich Greve
Tim Rowley
Andrew Shipilov
Andrew Shipilov
Associate Professor of Strategy
INSEAD
http://faculty.insead.edu/andrew-shipilov/
Book: Networkadvantage.org