Strategic alliance is an agreement between two or more organizations, with the aim to achieve a result one of the parties cannot achieve alone. As in the strategic alliance each company maintains its autonomy while gaining new opportunity, it could help a company to develop more effectively, expand into a new market or develop an advantage over competitors, among other possibilities. Would it be a good solution for Disney to create a strategic alliance with Pixar? Pixar’s family oriented content meshes well with Disney’s brand and is an important cog in its cinema/home video distribution, theme parks and consumer products divisions. Both Disney and Pixar are highly successful brands, however would Disney gain from building a partnership with Pixar or rather loose?
The first advantage of building up a strategic alliance with Pixar is the fact that it would be less costly than buying it and would require less money investment. What is more, as the companies would share their fixed costs and resources, so Disney would not have to pay for the software anymore. Moreover, both companies would probably build a feature film agreement and co-production agreement and share the costs. There is also opportunity to get a wider access to target market and enlarge distribution channels.

However, becoming a partner with Pixar, Disney‘s communication would be less efficient as it would lost control over the decision-making process. Also, the management involvement would get weaker. Disney would no longer be able to keep control over such an important issue as product quality, operating costs, employees, etc. The fact of the danger of misunderstandings which can lead to the breakdown of the agreement cannot be missed.
Furthermore, there also appears the risk that Pixar’s will change priorities, strategies or leadership, causing the alliance to falter.