How Good at Partnering Are We?

Not a day goes by without a new major business partnership being announced, from Apple creating a network of partnerships to revitalize iPad sales, to Google and Dexcom partnering to bring revolutionary glucose monitoring devices to market, to AstraZeneca going for a trifecta of new oncology partnerships with Heptares Therapeutics, Mirati Therapeutics, and Inovio in just the past quarter.

Companies recognize the importance of partnering to future revenues, but they face a common challenge: though they build strategies centered on external innovations and collaborations, they are doing so with organizations built to bring internally developed products and services to market. In many cases they either fundamentally lack or have significantly sub-optimized their organizational capability to execute partnerships. Though they have evolved their strategies to drive external innovation, they have failed to update their core operating models to reflect this strategic shift.