The shared leadership challenge in strategic alliances: Lessons from the U.S. healthcare industry

Executive Overview Although most of the academic research on strategic alliances has focused on structural characteristics of international alliances in global manufacturing-based industries, many executives are struggling to make strategic alliances work within other contexts. Using insights from the strategic-alliance literature and anecdotes from the healthcare industry, we refocus attention away from the traditional, solitary model of leadership to a shared model of leadership among the top executives of the partner organizations. In so doing, we advance three lessons for leaders to predict and explain strategic alliance success in the healthcare industry. Specifically, these lessons direct attention to top executives' joint abilities to collaborate from a distance, to focus on creating customer value above all else, and to experiment and implement innovative ways to compete in the industry with a partner.