Before you enter a Strategic Alliance consider the following:

—Alliance risk – assessing alliance risk should be balanced with an assessment of the expected return of benefit of the alliance in terms of improved financial performance, innovation, and organizational learning, and the opportunity cost of not engaging in a strategic alliance.

—Opportunity cost- relevant question is not whether an alliance is risky, but rather, which is riskier: going it alone, doing nothing, or engaging in an alliance?

—And if you don’t do it, will someone else?????

Every strategic alliance entails some amount of faith and trust. Anyone who has ever been in a strategic alliance has had to have faith in the future success of the alliance. And perhaps even had to make a leap of faith in the face of innumerable uncertainties in a strategic alliance.