Strategic Alliance
Abstract

Organizations are facing exciting and dynamic challenges in the 21st century. In the globalized business, companies require strategic thinking and only by evolving good corporate strategies can they become strategically competitive. A sustained or sustainable competitive advantage occurs when firm implements a value – creating strategy of which other companies are unable to duplicate the benefits or find it too costly to initiate.
Corporate strategy includes the commitments, decisions and actions required for a firm to achieve strategic competitiveness and earn above average returns. The goals of corporate strategy are challenging not only for large firms like Microsoft but also for small local computer retail outlets or even dry cleaners.
I hope to offer a concise description of strategic alliances as well as a picture of who is participating in them and why. The states of affairs that encouraged this “rising era of collaboration” will be reviewed and the necessary steps in formulating alliances.

Examples of companies that are or were involved in strategic alliances will be discussed, others of which were thriving and the others of which they were not. This paper is not intended to serve as a comprehensive study of strategic alliances.

Introduction
Corporate alliances, which are now called “strategic”, are in fact not new. Westinghouse Electric and Mitsubishi were allied for seventy years. The alliance between Ford and Mazda dates back to 1931, when Toyo Corg Kogyo (Mazda’s predecessor) asked for help to manufacture a three-wheeled vehicle in Japan. What are new are the resurgence of alliances and the scope of activities they embrace. In the 1990s, strategic alliances were a key factor in organization existence.

Strategic alliances reflect an unstable economy. They are an attempt to offer stability to the environment.