Current strategy thinking focuses on what to do, not how to motivate employees, suppliers and business partners to do it. Whether working with employees or with external suppliers, companies are increasingly stumbling with implementing strategy. But why is this happening? And how can we address it? Collaboration Strategy argues that motivating people and companies is fundamental to business success. In the activities that matter most in today's economy – design, development, marketing, sales, projects – it is hard to define just what you want done. Setting up business activities to get the results you want becomes a strategic challenge. In industries from pharmaceuticals to fashion, software to stock exchanges, new ways of working with partners that break down traditional company boundaries and establish new roles and relationships have enabled businesses to grow rapidly and achieve superior profits.
At the heart of this book, Felix Barber and Michael Goold have combined their considerable expertise to present a complete and original 'collaboration framework' based on their findings over a seven year period in which they interviewed over 200 businesses. The framework explains how to set up to get the results you want for a range of different activities and industries. They present the 10 requirements needed for profitable collaboration, and use real-life scenarios to apply their framework and analysis, offering a menu of tactics to address the most common problems in setting up collaboration with partners.
Essentially, you must design a basis for working together, or 'collaboration,' with your employees and suppliers that will get them to do what you want.
Felix Barber is a Director of Ashridge Strategic Management Centre. He is also a non executive director of the Swiss institutional asset management company CE Asset Management AG, and an independent consultant. Before joining the Centre in 2005, he was a Senior Partner at The Boston Consulting Group where he worked for the firm's London, Munich and Zurich offices and ran the firm's worldwide Organization practice. Michael Goold is a founding director of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre. Prior to establishing the Centre in 1987, he was a Senior Fellow at the London Business School and, before that, a Partner at The Boston Consulting Group. Michael continues to consult with UK and international clients from a variety of industry sectors. He holds an MA and a BPhil. from Oxford University and an MBA from Stanford Business School.
