Strategic alliances or partnerships have become essential to competitive success in today’s changing health care environment. These partnerships allow healthcare
organizations to pursue opportunities beyond their current skill and resource base.
The challenge to health care organizations is to develop the capacity to collaborate as a core competence. Poorly managed strategic alliances can be a black
hole for management time and resources. Senior management often spends a lot of time on the formal partnership design—legal structure, governance—and disengage after
the agreement is signed. Strong ongoing alliances need more than a vision and a legal agreement. Attention is needed to the ongoing value-added nature of the
alliance.
In Alliance Advantage, by Yves L. Doz and Gary Hamel, three primary purposes are identified for creating a value-added alliance.
1. Co-opetition
Co-opetition turns both actual or potential competitors and complementers into partners. This process builds critical mass. This strategy is important for healthcare
organizations to pursue when critical mass is needed to grow revenues, reduce costs, or protect market share.
2. Co-specialization
Co-specialization is the value-added process of combining previously separate resources, positions, skills, and knowledge. Partners contribute unique and
differentiated resources. Healthcare organizations who need to refocus on a narrower range of core skills may explore co-specialization as an approach to develop
new services.
3. Learning and Internalization
Partnerships can provide an avenue for learning and internalizing new skills. Healthcare organizations exploring the development of new services, new pricing
strategies, or new distribution systems may determine that internal growth of new skill sets is too slow and uncertain to meet new opportunities in a timely manner.
Pyrce Healthcare Group has extensive experience in strategic alliance development. We have worked with clients from the market research phase through alliance
design and have facilitated implementation and evaluation. Contact Christine Duffy for a flow chart of our Strategic
Alliance Consulting Services.
Doz, Yves L. and Gary Hamel. Alliance Advantage. Harvard Business School Press, 1998.
