In Search of Engineers Who Are Leading Co-Development Alliances

Nearly all "strategic alliances" are co-marketing, OEM/reselling, or co-selling (value-exchange) relationships. That trend is increasing as businesses become more near-term and bottom-line focused, to the detriment of their longer-term success.

Co-development, or engineering-led value-creating relationships, are extraordinarily unique:

• They are business' most intimate form of inter-company relationship; and therefore, their most challenging relationships.
• They have a unique set of challenges in a business climate that is predominantly fear-based and scarcity-oriented - undermining trust and communications, critical for collaborative creativity.
• They have to deal with overwhelming complexities: technologies, regulations, intellectual property, strategies, organizational structures, people, divergent corporate cultures, ...
• Finally, the people who lead these relationships are engineers who rarely participate in alliance-oriented forums, conferences, or professional organizations. They don't feel like they need anyone else's help because, after all, they are engineers!

Kindly forward this article to individuals in your organization who are leading R&D-driven collaborative efforts. I am interested in exploring how collaboration might happen amongst true collaborators.

Be a Creator of Value (turn on Closed Captions to read along) is about sharing with others my 17 years of experience leading co-development relationships. I share how the impossible was accomplished amongst Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and SAP (in different alliances). If you don't have 57 minutes to view the video here are the slides discussed there (slide #3 is new - recently added).

Joe Kittel - Relationship Engineer | Senior Consultant in Strategic Alliances

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