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Partnering Wisdom

Our Favorite Partnering Quotes

 

These are our favorite partnering quotes. We like them because they condense much partnering wisdom into few words.

Drucker

"Businesses once grew by one of two ways; grass roots up, or by acquisition... Today they grow through alliances - all kinds of dangerous alliances. Joint ventures and customer partnerings which, by the way, very few people understand."
Peter F. Drucker

Sun Tzu

"If you do not seek out allies and helpers, then you will be isolated and weak."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Chinese War Text

Those who establish adaptable formations will survive - even if they are small. While those who establish unadaptable formations shall perish - even if they are large. So it has been since the beginning of time."
From The Ancient Book of the Huainan Masters
(a 2000 year old Chinese war text)

Machiavelli

"The forces of a powerful ally can be useful and good to those who have recourse to them... but are perilous to those who become dependent on them."
Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince"

 

From the Business Press

 

Business Week

"...companies should expand beyond their existing resources through licensing arrangements, strategic alliances, and supplier relationships."
Business Week

Fortune

"Alliances have become an integral part of contemporary strategic thinking."
Fortune Magazine

 

Partnering Mistakes

 

Van der Roh

"God is in the details."
Mies Van der Roh

Anonymous

"The Devil is in the details."
Anonymous

Sun Tzu

"There are routes not to be followed, armies not to be attacked, citadels not to be besieged, territory not to be fought over."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Sahakian

"Prospecting for partners is a difficult and subtle process. It's easy to dissipate huge quantities of critical executive time, money and corporate focus on false starts - partnerings destined from inception never to consummate nor bear fruit."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"If you fail to get it right at the start, it may cost you dearly to fix it later - that is if you are even permitted the opportunity to fix it."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"It is easier to get into trouble than to get out of it."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

 

Taking Action

 

Alice in Wonderland

"Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."
The Red Queen to Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898, English mathematician and writer)

The Marine Corps

"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week"
from Warfighting, the United States Marine Corps

Sun Tzu

"Thus, though I have heard of successful military operations that were clumsy but swift, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Napoleon

"On s'engage et puis on voit!"
Napoleon Bonaparte ("One jumps into the fray, then figures out what to do next.")

Sun Tzu

"The essential factor of military success is speed, that is taking advantage of others' unpreparedness or lack of foresight, their failure to catch up, going by routes they do not expect, attacking where they are not on guard. This you cannot accomplish with hesitation."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Von Clausewitz

"The world has a way of undermining complex plans. This is particularly true in fast moving environments. A fast moving environment can evolve more quickly than a complex plan can be adapted to it. By the time you have adapted, the target has changed."
General Carl Von Clausewitz

 

Change and Speed of Adaptation

 

Sun Tzu

"The value of time, that is of being a little ahead of your opponent, often provides greater advantage than superior numbers or greater resources."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Charles Darwin

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Charles Darwin

Sahakian

"People used to think the large would eat the small, instead it is the swift who are eating the slow."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"Partnerings are the quickest way to grow your company, especially during times of rapid change."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"If your environment is changing, you must change with it. If you don't, you perish."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"You must adapt and innovate more today than you ever have in the past. You have two options. You can change internally, or you can change your external relationships. Internal change is the more difficult of the two."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

 

Partnering With Customers

 

Sahakian

"The most beneficial type of partnering you can engage in is partnering with your customers. The benefits are compelling. You use it to gain customers, protect them from predation by competitors, and to protect your profit margins."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"A customer benefits from partnering with a vendor only as long as the relationship fulfills its needs. The vendor, on the other hand, will try to maintain the relationship as long as possible."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"A supplier will want a relationship that is difficult for a customer to walk away from, or for competitor vendors to disturb. The vendor should try to cultivate its partnering relations with a customer through close working ties with its customer's employees, or through its intimate understanding of its customer's business."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"What you sell must be strategic or important to your customer or your customer's customer, otherwise it's not worth their time and energy to partner with you. A vendor can get a leg up if they possess any of the following characteristics:
     -     They are already one of their customer's largest or most important vendors;
     -     There is a good fit between the vendor's core competence and the customer's needs; or
     -     The vendor can solve a problem faced by the customer's customer."

Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

 

Why Partner

 

Sahakian

"You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many customers."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"Partnering is the quickest, most effective way to re-engineer a business."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

"Without local guides, your enemy employs the land as a weapon against you."
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Sahakian

"Well, you have NO CHOICE but to keep running faster just to stay in place. If you rely solely on your ability to implement internal change, you may not make it."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"You can adapt by changing your organization's relationships with other organizations through corporate partnerings. Instead of building internal capabilities you turn to partnerships and alliances. As you need to change and adapt, you change partners. Companies that know how to form and use these partnerings are displacing those that don't get it."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"Since (with the use of partnerings) the organizations minimize the amount of internal change, you don't face the same resistance from reluctant managers and executives slowing you down as they protect their jobs, their egos or their turfs. This way you can avoid employee morale problems."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"Joint Ventures, Alliances, and other Corporate Partnerings are fueling the growth of the world's most successful companies. The demand to deliver more new products, more quickly, and at lower prices has never been greater. Joint Ventures and other collaborative business arrangements are revolutionizing how winning companies compete. They permit companies to enter new markets and field new products that they otherwise couldn't do on their own. They are the quickest way to grow your company, particularly in times of change."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"Few companies have everything that they need. You may need money, customers, or product. No matter what you need, there is someone who has it. That someone is a potential Corporate Partner."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"Partnering has proven itself one of the most powerful business tools for dealing with fast changing markets, technologies and customers. As the global economy speeds up, partnering is becoming the weapon of choice for today's successful competitors."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

 

Partnering Practices

 

Sahakian

"Partnering should be wielded as a sword, not a shield. It best suits companies with aspirations that exceed their resources. You should be driven by a motivation to reach out and gain market share, develop new markets, and leverage your current position."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"Measure your success by how well you obtain your goals - not how well you get along with your partner."
Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

Sahakian

"There are three vital steps to partnering success:
     1.     Determine what it is you need but don't have: customers, capital, special expertise, products, production capacity, or distribution channels,
     2.     Determine who has what you need,
     3.     Ask them for it, but, first make sure you have something they want or need. (this last point is the most important)"

Curtis E. Sahakian, Managing Director of the Corporate Partnering Institute

 

Sun Tzu

 

Sun Tzu

"The relative size of your force as against that of your adversary is by itself of no consequence. What controls is the relative size of your force at the point where you join in battle. You can strike with the few and be many if you strike your adversary in his gaps. Seek out places where the defense is not strict, the place not tightly guarded, the generals weak, the troops disorderly, the supplies are scarce and the forces are isolated."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Sun Tzu

"Be the first to seize intersecting ground, that is ground which lies the intersections of borders or intersections of main thoroughfares of commerce and travel. Your occupation of it gives you access to all who border it and all who would covet it. On intersecting ground, if you establish alliances you are safe, if you lose alliances you are in peril."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Sun Tzu

"We cannot enter into informed alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbors and the plans of our adversaries. _ When entering enemy territory, in order to lead your army, you must know the face of the country - its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps. Without local guides, you are unable to turn to your account the natural advantages to be obtained from the land. Without local guides, your enemy employs the land as a weapon against you."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Sun Tzu

"Unless you know the mountains and the forests, the defiles and impasses, the lay of the marshes and swamps, you cannot maneuver with an armed force. Unless you use local guides, you cannot get the advantages of the land."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

Sun Tzu

"So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

 

More Quotes

 

Drucker

"The greatest change in corporate culture - and the way business is being conducted - may be the accelerated growth of relationships based... on partnership."
Peter F. Drucker

Drucker

"Businesses once grew by one of two ways; grass roots up, or by acquisition... Today businesses grow through alliances - all kinds of dangerous alliances. Joint ventures and customer partnerings which, by the way, very few people understand."
Peter F. Drucker

Ford

"The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed."
Henry Ford

Sun Tzu

"What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge."

Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

UPSIDE

"...collaboration has become a dominant dimension of competitive strategy. Competition will always be there, as yin will always be there for yang. But companies that were previously fixated on how they could gain advantage from another's loss are now instinctively looking to see how they can gain from another's gain."
UPSIDE Magazine.

Von Clausewitz

"In war everything is simple, but it's the simple things that are difficult."
General Carl Von Clausewitz

 

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