Examples of Strategic Alliances

Gallo, the world’s biggest maker of wine, does not grow a single grape and similarly, Nike, the world’s largest producer of athletic foot-wear, does not produce a single shoe, Boeing, the giant aircraft company, makes little more than cockpits and wing bits. These organizations, like a number of other businesses nowadays, have created strategic alliances with their suppliers to do much of their actual production for them.

Examples of Strategic Alliances in Business

1. Nicholas Piramal India Ltd (NPIL) entered into a 5-year in licensing agreement with Genzyme Corp, USA, for synvisc viscose supplementation in the Indian market.

2. ICICI Bank and Vodafone India: A strategic alliance example in India is of ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector bank and Vodafone India, one of India’s largest telecom service providers, entered into a strategic alliance to launch a unique mobile money transfer and payment service called ‘m-pesa’.

3. Starbucks partnered with Barnes and Nobles bookstores in 1993 to offer in-house coffee shops, helping both retailers.

4. Asian Paints, the largest paint-maker in India, acquired a strategic stake in Singapore-based Berger International in 2002.

5. Apple and IBM strategic alliance: The relationship will leverage IBM’s big data analytics and industry sales consultants and software developers, to assist Apple penetrate the global corporate enterprise market.

6. Etihad Airways, based in Abu Dhabi, has completed an investment in India’s Jet Airways. This alliance will provide considerable benefits for both carriers, as it opens Etihad to 23 cities in India, and offers Jet Airways passengers connection possibilities to the US, Europe, Middle East and Africa that were previously unavailable.

7. Spotify and Uber strategic alliance: The power to enter a hired car welcomed by your favorite playlist provides extra value, significant competitive advantage and exclusivity for Uber cars. For Spotify, it offers an incentive for users to upgrade to the premium level.

8. Microsoft India and TCS: Microsoft India and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)  entered into a strategic alliance to launch Microsoft-TCS virtualization Center of Excellence (CoE). It is designed to help customers experience the right approach to applying and managing virtualization across IT architectural layers

9. Google & Luxottica: The alliance offers a far reaching strategic partnership between Luxottica and Google to work together across multiple efforts on the creation of innovative iconic wearable devices. They will establish a team of experts dedicated to working on the design, development, tooling and engineering of Glass products that straddle the line between high-fashion, lifestyle and innovative technology.

10. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and ANSYS Inc, a global innovator of simulation software and product development technology, entered into a partnership which will help their clients accelerate product development dramatically and simultaneously boost the quality and reliability of their designs through integrated digital prototyping.

11. Fiat and Chrysler: In car industry, Fiat S.p.A. and Chrysler LLC entered into an alliance so that the two automakers can share vehicle platforms, distribution channels, and technology.

12. The HP and Microsoft global strategic alliance is amongst the longest standing alliances of this type, with well over Twenty five years of combined marketplace leadership aimed at helping customers and channel partners worldwide enhance productivity by using innovative technologies.

Read also: Types of Strategic Alliances

Strategic alliances have become significantly common in business. However they are still notoriously difficult to pull off. This type of cooperation lies between mergers and acquisitions and organic growth. Strategic alliances occur when a couple of businesses join together to pursue mutual benefits.

I have provided some successful examples of strategic alliances between companies. Strategic partnerships can be extremely effective approach to build businesses.