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It's an auspicious time for us all in business and especially those of us who have waken up to the enormous opportunities online.

While there are many great challenges in the economy and for business owners, many have spoken of the gold rush of opportunity that is on the Internet today. And this is so true! Never has there been so much opportunity and so many resources, literally available at our fingertips!

But for many, this has escaped them. This is because as small business owners, we tend to try to do it all ourselves. All of the successful businessmen have told us, time and again:

"Make offers more attractive for potential buyers!"

"Know your strengths and weaknesses and delegate your weaknesses, or form a joint venture!"

"Take what is working and exploit that to the fullest!"

"Take MASSIVE ACTION!"

So how are you going to do this if you have no resources, no time or no money? Strategic alliances or joint ventures are the answer to this.

Please leave comments or message me with your thoughts.

Strategy Calls.com also invites you to answer the questions below:

1) Is there a particular aspect of strategic alliances that you feel you do not grasp, or in other words, that you would like to learn about?

2) Have you tried joint venture relationships before and what are your experiences from this/them?

3) If negative, what went wrong? What was missing?

4) If positive, what was right? And has the relationship continued?

5) Is there something that particularly frightens you about strategic alliances/joint ventures?

6) Would you like help creating a joint venture or strategic alliance?

7) Please state in what area you need assistance.

Would you like to be a case study?

I hope to hear from you soon.

Strategy Calls!

Angela Wickenberg

P.S. Please join us!   http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54338290656

Various types of strategic alliances and joint ventures exist.  To avoid confusion, I feel it's important to be aware of the thought behind the words and the names and define the terms, as they are normally used in business beyond online marketing.

Joint ventures are typcially thought of as arrangements where organizations remain independent but set up a newly created organization jointly owned by the parties involved.

A consortia may involve two or more organizations in a joint venture arrangement. An example could be the Star Alliance (a group of several air transport companies), gigantic building projects (like the ones that builds bridges and tunnels, connection two countries) or major aerospace undertakings (like Airbus).  In these circumstances, the organizational relationships are likely to be formalized either in shareholding or agreements specifying asset sharing and the distribution of profits.

At the other extreme are networks, which are arrangements whereby two or more organizations work in collaboration without formal relationships but through a mechanism of mutual advantage and trust.

In Internet Marketing, more opportunistic arrangements arise, which are likely  to be more focused around particular ventures or projects, but that may not be highly formalized. These arrangements are much nearer to market relationships than to contractual relationships.  They exist for a number of reasons:

1) Because assets do not neet joint management - capital, expertise, know-how and so on can come together more informally (as in StomperNet, where the teachers are not employees per se, but have their own companies).

2) Assets cannot be separated easily from the firms involved, or without harm being done, for example, it may be that one partner is providing access to distribution channels that are part of their operation as a whole (one company's list of customers, for example).

3) If the assets involved were split off into a separate organization, there would be high risk of their being appropriated by another party involved. This would be particularly the case for the know-how and skills of the different parties involved.

Types and Motives For Strategic Alliances

Forms of Alliances:

    A) Loose (Market) Relationships

          Networks

          Opportunistic Alliances

Here, assets do not need joint management. But the assets cannot be separated and there is a high risk of the assets/skills or know-how being appropriated. This is where most of us are in online businesses

    B) Contractual Relationships

          Sub-contracting

          Licensing and franchises

In this type of alliance, asset management can be isolated.  Assets/skills can be separated, but in some cases there is still a high risk of assets being appropriated, whereas in other cases, there are low risks involved.

    C) Formalized Ownership/Relationships

          Consortia

          Joint Ventures

In formalized ownership, assets need to be jointly managed. Sometimes assets/skills can be separated and at other times they cannot, depending on the instance.

    D) Formal Integration

          Aquisitions and mergers

This is complicated and any and all combinations can occur here.

Sometimes, strategic alliances (or joint ventures) do not work out very well.  Sometimes, they are not a good match, even though, on the surface, all the criteria and rationale for matching options with circumstances seemed to be a perfect fit.  Why is this?

Angela Wickenberg

P.S. Have you joined us yet?  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54338290656

Strategy Calls! - The Strategic Alliance of Online Businesses - is a new group on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54338290656&ref=mf 

formed for the purpose of being a forum of opportunity for online businesses to network with each other, and to offer tele-seminars, courses and conferences that may be of interest to the online business owner.

In online marketing, this is known as the JV or joint venture.

As was recently pointed out in the astute online marketer, Rich Schefren's recent article on the subject,
http://www.strategicprofits.com/blog/1-plus-1-equals-3/, many marketers have treated the JV as an email campaign, but a joint venture relationship, or a strategic alliance, is what you make it to be.

Traditionally, the ability of a firm to price higher than competitors is called differentiation. A product or a service which offers something unique,or is or greater value than the competition, could then merit a sustainable higher price.

But a firm may also choose to offer a differentiated product or service at a similar price to competitors in order to increase market share and volume.

It is, of course, of no value in achieving competitive advantage unless it is of value to the user, so that the user has preference for those products or services over those of competitors. Focused differentiation through strategic alliances lead to a perceived added value to a particular product or segment, which may also warrant a price premium.

The aim with strategic alliances is to achieve higher market share, and therefore higher volume, than competitors by offering better products or services at the same price; or enhanced margins by pricing slightly higher.

It is much more difficult for a competitor to imitate a basis of differentiation linked to a mix of activities or features rather than just a product or a service, if the mix is a good one, then this is highly likely to benefit many of the businesses online.

Strategy Calls! - The Strategic Alliance of Online Businesses - encourages businesses of all kinds to join this group to

*network
*find possible partners to form strategic alliances or enhanced joint ventures with
*receive information on the subject
*listen to experts being interview from the comfort of your home or office
*receive information on upcoming networking conferences and seminars.

The Strategy Calls!  website, to be located at http://StrategyCalling.com,  is under construction and a schedule of calls is forthcoming and will be available very soon.

Strategy Calls! Please join us!

Angela Wickenberg
Founder

Apropos types of strategic alliances…

I just love all those free investor newletters that drop into my mail box every day.  Today was no exception. Ann Sosnowski at the Taipan Publishing Group wrote an article about how renegade invesor Carl Icahn was pushing Microsoft and Yahoo together after he starting buying up shares in Yahoo.  She wrote:

*** Also adding to investor optimism is the possibility of another deal between Yahoo Inc. (YHOO:NASDAQ) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT:NASDAQ).

When Yahoo declined Microsoft’s $44.6 million bid, activist investor Carl Icahn began buying up shares last week.

Carl Icahn is one of the richest men in the world. And he’s the most famous of today’s corporate raiders.

Carl Icahn votes with his money as an activist investor. Money talks. If he takes a substantial holding in your company, you better be concerned.

Ever since he staged a hostile takeover of TWA in 1985, Icahn is known as a ruthless activist investor who will do everything in his power to make you agree with him about how YOUR business is run. Or he’ll wipe you out.

Although Yahoo does have plans in place to repel a hostile takeover, it decided instead to renegotiate around Icahn with Microsoft.

Now Microsoft and Yahoo are in talks again to combat Google Inc. (GOOG:NASDAQ) in the online marketplace. They’re talking alternatives to a complete buyout at this point.

It would be extremely profitable for Yahoo and Microsoft to team up against GOOG. There’s definite value in Yahoo that Microsoft should be able to unlock for investors.

Angela Wickenberg

P.S. Please join us! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54338290656

Taking a pause.  What would life be like if we never took one? 

Maddening I would say.

I had a deepened realization of this as I was Twittering this morning at twitter.com/ebizmom.  I had been feeling disoriented for the past few weeks, but especially after some minor day surgery a week ago.

"Feels like I lost footing and can't remember what I was doing",  and I wrote that  "Sometimes, it's important to just breathe deeply and relax when things are cloudy and even a little 'out of order'. Letting the dust settle", and  "The most important symbol in music is the PAUSE, and pausing when speaking is THE most powerful strategy to use. And so it is with life."

As I ate my mid-morning snack, I couldn't stop thinking about the Pause and it's importance in our lives, even for all life, and how we unconsciously use the pause every day.   We would go insane without taking a pause every now and then, so in this sense, the Pause is the most important word in the dictionary, and the most important thing, the one thing we all need to learn how to purposely use in our lives. Even in software development, a breakpoint is an intentional stopping or pausing place in a program, put in place for debugging purposes, according to Wikipedia.

In my humble opinion, the Pause can be used to attain fantastic goals, like Peace of Mind, Love, Friendship, and Financial Freedom.

We take pauses every day.  But a lot of the pauses that we take are unconscious; they have become automatic.

We need to learn to take conscious pauses when we breathe, eat, play and work.

A great speaker takes pauses in strategic places to emphasize a point, and so do the greatest of salespersons.

The music that moves us the most uses pauses very effectively. 

It's called Fermata.  This word is very similar to ferment: to stir up or seethe with excitment.

We become more exciting and build expectation when we take a pause, even though the taking of the pause itself is relaxing.

We need to rest. Give ourselves a chance to release the past and heal. To become whole.

In poetry it's called Prosody; the study of poetic metre and the art of versification.

Without the Pause, there is no Beauty. There is no Music. There is no poetry.

Prosody is also the patterns of stress and intonation in a language.

To take a pause means to take a short break; a temporary stop.

Taking a pause lets the dust settle, but it also helps build momentum and excitement.

Taking a few deep breathes clears my muddled thoughts and helps me focus better. 

In this sense, the Pause is meditation.

To stop.  To reflect. To consider. To remember what's important.

To breathe.

It only takes a few moments. Just a few breathes, and we can change our lives.

Go in a new direction. Or decide to continue on a chosen path with new-found direction and purpose.

So, take a conscious Pause, and breathe.

Angela Wickenberg

In that spirit, Business 2.0 magazine sent senior writer Paul Kaihla and a team of reporters on a quest to find some of the best "best practices" in business today. The companies they interviewed have stumbled upon their own unique methods for doing everything from running meetings and generating product ideas to troubleshooting M&A deals and keeping board directors on their toes.

Following are 25 ideas that are truly gems, broken down into five categories: finance, HR, management, marketing, and R&D.

They're methods that help keep some of the best-run companies, like Procter & Gamble (Research), Google (Research), Southwest Airlines (Research), Microsoft (Research), Intel (Research), and Coke (Research), at the top of their game. You've probably never heard of most of these practices — but you might want to start implementing them tomorrow. 

HEWLETT-PACKARD CEO Mark Hurd loves numbers–and insists that his managers learn to love them too. Since Hurd came onboard last March, one of the key tools he's used to keep pace with rivals is his extreme form of industry benchmarking. Instead of comparing HP's sales and profits with Dell's or IBM's, the company now tracks itself against rivals by every conceivable measure. "We want to make sure we break down every unit and business function," explains Marius Haas, senior strategy officer at HP, "so we can become best in class in each one."

Here's how it works: Imagine a matrix with various business units running down the side (printing, servers, storage, IT services, etc.) and business functions across the top (finance, HR, marketing, R&D, etc.). Now create benchmarks for each of the 72 resulting cells and you have a good idea of how Hurd is managing the $87 billion company. The benchmarks are the best guess of where HP's rivals are going to be in 2007, based on more than a dozen variables, from real estate cost per square foot to operating expenses as a percentage of gross margin.

Before Hurd took over, HP measured itself primarily against IBM, using one very blunt tool: costs as a percentage of revenues. That ignored IBM's higher gross margins and the fact that it has more gross profit to spread around. Hurd's new benchmarking method formed the basis of HP's reorganization effort announced last July, through which HP has promised to save $3 billion by 2008. Already there is key evidence of success: Operating expenses as a percentage of gross margin dropped 2 percent in 2005, helping to fatten profits by $385 million. — E.S.

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Yesterday, Rich Schefren did a packed conference call with more than 1,000 people eager to ask him questions about his new product, the GPS Guidance Profit System.

Pick up the free report he wrote a couple of weeks ago on eliminating your constraints here

Just the free report itself is full of good information that anyone could act on right away.

They got A LOT of answers, and a seminar's worth of actionable content, too. The listeners enjoyed it, and because Rich had a good time doing it, he's ready to do another "short" version of Rich-TV on UStream.

It won't be up for 26 hours this time like the last one a week or so ago.

Rich will be giving away a free GPS Program to someone watching live on Ustream.tv, plus giving out even more constraint-busting advice.

It starts at 1:00pm Eastern time, and going for a while. Then they'll be closing down the Guided Profit System to new enrollments.

I got a ton of advice and information out of the 26 hour webinar, so I'm certain this shorter one will also be a great use of your time.

Use this link to go to Rich's Ustream.tv channel at 1:00pm Eastern time on Thursday… Rich-TV GPS Giveaway on Ustream

Ask any question about GPS and eliminating your constraints that you want. And pick up some ideas from the answers to other people's questions.

Then he'll pick one lucky person from the Ustream viewer roster… and give them access to his Guided Profit System Program… absolutely FREE.

See you on Rich-TV.

Tags: RichSchefren, gps, guided profit system, removing constraints, gps giveaway on ustream, Rich-TV

Rich Schefren has an interesting blogpost.  He writes:

If your business is the ideal business for you - you should’ve noticed a certain feeling over the break. With each passing day away from work you should’ve felt a tension drawing you back to work.  It keeps building with each passing day away until you just couldn’t take it anymore. Finally to simply keep your sanity you NEED to get back to work.

This rings true if you are stimulated by your work and feel energized by it and rings false if you hate the work you do.  He furthermore poses a few questions and answers them and asks that we do the same.

As I mentioned in one of my posts, either on this site or on AngelaWickenberg.com, I have never been good at keeping my goals; the results were always far from what I expected (sometimes a lot better and sometimes a lot worse).  The answer could lie in the questions, if answered really honestly; he states: "if I wanted to continually improve my company and my own performance I need to leverage my past ex