I was delighted to review this book as part of the CMI Management Book of the Year competition. Here is what I offered:

This book delivers amply on the sub-title of “How To Unlock Value From Your Alliances And Partnerships”. Building on 40 years of well-referenced research, it links research findings with case studies from several industries before building valuable insights into different types of alliance, different levels of advantage, how to decide what pattern is appropriate for your company, then to construct, manage and unbundle your alliances. It guides the reader through a set of tools designed to help them understand and reap advantage from their company’s alliances. Whilst speaking of formal organisational alliances rather than networks, many of the concepts would be relevant in building and using your corporate or private networks more effectively.

Moving from vertical or horizontal integration to effective networks/alliances is a direction of travel for today’s organisations and managers of the future would do well to read this and explore how alliances will help their organisation. This book may not offer anything revolutionary but it is certainly revelationary in the way the prospects of real world organisations are analysed in terms of their alliance strategies.

Aimed at larger companies rather than SMEs, this is a ‘must read’ if your company needs the help/co-operation/support of others to succeed.