Thursday, June 02, 2005

Ten Factors that Make Alliances Fail

How do you make business alliances, joint ventures and partnerships work? That was the theme of a roundtable I led earlier this week (May 31) at the Wisdom Exchange, a forum for the entrepreneurs who run Ontario's Fastest-Growing Companies.

We had some pretty interesting discussions, and I wil include some of that material tomorrow. For now, according to my group of successful Canadian entrepreneurs, here are the 10 Factors that Make Alliances Fail:

* Different expectations
* Different priorities
* Lack of focus
* Lack of buy-in by all stakeholders
* Insufficient incentive for all parties to make it work
* Lack of clear vision/strategy
* Failure to plan exit strategy
* Inadequate due diligence
* One partner’s incompetence, misrepresentation or failure to perform
* Changes at the corporate level for one partner, e.g. a corporate takeover

Forewarned is forearmed.

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