The Collaborative Business Podcast

Peter Simoons
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Conversations with experts in the field of alliances & partnerships and with business owners and entrepreneurs who have built their businesses thanks to collaborations. The show aims to be an inspirational source for the listeners to provide useful insights to the best ways of working together in business-to-business collaboration. petersimoons.substack.com

  1. 4d ago

    How Strategic Alliances Became a Force Multiplier

    When a company grows beyond its home market, there comes a point when the direct sales approach that built the business simply cannot carry it any further. In this republished episode of the Collaborative Business Podcast, originally recorded in 2015, I speak with Sunil Mande, who at the time headed up global alliances and partnerships at Indus Software Technologies, an India-based software product company serving the banking and telecom sectors. Indus Software began in 1990 selling its lending automation products through a traditional direct channel, with sales executives knocking on doors and cold calling prospects. As Sunil explains in our conversation, the leadership team eventually realised that this model would never be sufficient to achieve the revenue growth, brand recognition and market reach the company aspired to. The answer was a structured alliance programme, and Sunil was brought in to build it from scratch. What makes this episode particularly valuable is Sunil’s candid walk-through of how he approached that challenge. He describes the criteria he developed for evaluating potential partners, from company size and growth pattern to complementary offerings, market penetration and willingness to share risk and reward. He also explains the deliberate choices a company must make between global system integrators, regional players and country-focused partners, and how those choices depend on the strategy set for the year ahead. Two themes stood out to me in our conversation. First, Sunil is emphatic that alliances only work when they are fully embedded in the organisation, with genuine buy-in from top management all the way through to the sales, product and delivery teams. Second, he is refreshingly honest about failure. Not every partnership lives up to its promise, and a mature alliance programme is one that pauses, reviews and course-corrects when a partnership is not delivering. Sunil also shares his advice for companies considering their first strategic alliance, drawing a useful distinction between startups, who may need to build credibility first, and established companies seeking a step change in growth. For the latter, he argues, alliances act as a genuine force multiplier, with multiple parties carrying your product into markets you could never reach alone. Whether you are just starting out with partnerships or refining an established programme, I trust Sunil’s practical, execution-focused perspective will give you plenty to reflect on. This was the last republished episode of the Collaborative Business Podcast. If you’re interested in a new series of conversations with experienced alliance professionals, let me know. Drop me an email at podcast@petersimoons.com and feel free to include suggestions of people you’d like to hear featured. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit petersimoons.substack.com

    How Strategic Alliances Became a Force Multiplier

  2. Oct 21

    From Individual Alliances to Network Advantage

    Most companies manage alliances one relationship at a time. My guest in this episode argues that this approach leaves enormous value on the table. Andrew Shipilov, professor of strategy at INSEAD and author of “Network Advantage: How to Unlock Value from Your Alliances and Partnerships“, joins me to explain why the real competitive battleground is no longer the individual partnership, but the network of alliances a company builds around itself. At the heart of our conversation sits a deceptively simple shift in perspective. Rather than treating each alliance as a standalone venture, Shipilov invites executives to think about cross-partner knowledge transfer: how lessons learned with one partner can be leveraged with another. He illustrates this with Philips, a company that learns from a brewery, a coffee maker, a software vendor and Dutch hospitals, and then connects those insights at the centre of its own network. One of the most valuable clarifications in this episode is the distinction between alliance networks and ecosystems, two terms often used interchangeably but fundamentally different. Ecosystem partners are complements at arm’s length, whilst alliance partners involve material knowledge sharing and coordinated strategic moves. Knowing which is which determines how you allocate scarce management attention. We also explore two contrasting network archetypes. The integrated, Toyota-style network of mutually connected partners generates trust and incremental innovation but rarely breakthroughs. The star or hub-and-spoke network, where unconnected partners orbit a central firm, offers exactly the opposite. Which one suits your company? Shipilov provides a framework, and the answer depends on the turbulence of your environment and the size of your organisation. The conversation then turns to leadership. For executives in established companies, the core requirement is humility: recognising that you are not as good, or as fast, as you believed, and that others can help you discover new markets for your products. Interestingly, Shipilov reframes the usual control-versus-trust debate as rigidity versus flexibility, arguing that command-and-control structures excel in stable environments but collapse under uncertainty. We close with his take on the perennial alliances-versus-acquisitions question, his “small wins” strategy for building trust with new partners (illustrated with a story of Portuguese winemakers), and a recommended companion read for anyone weighing build, borrow or buy decisions. Whether you are an alliance professional or a CEO who has yet to recognise that collaboration is your job too, this episode offers frameworks you can apply immediately. Through my “Optimise Your Alliances” programme, you’ll gain fresh insights and practical tools to strengthen your alliances. By the end of this programme, you’ll be equipped with actionable strategies and a clear perspective on how to take your alliances to the next level. Find out more. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit petersimoons.substack.com

  3. Oct 7

    From Gut Feel to Repeatable Fact

    When two companies decide to partner, the fanfare of the announcement rarely survives contact with reality. The agreed objectives quietly slip, nobody is quite sure why, and when the review finally arrives twelve months later, everyone is busy fixing problems that belonged to last year rather than this one. It is a familiar story, and according to my guest this week, a stubbornly persistent one: even after decades of professionalisation, roughly half of all alliances and channel partnerships still fail to meet their objectives. In this episode of the Collaborative Business Podcast I sit down with Bill Davidson, founder of Alliance Analytics Software and holder of two patents covering the selection, structuring and management of third-party partnerships. Bill’s career spans sales, marketing and channel management, including time at GE Capital IT Solutions selling the complex infrastructure solutions of the late nineties, an era he recalls vividly, and not always fondly. Anyone who worked in the software channel in those days will recognise his war stories: forecasts the partners never truly believed in, vendors who failed to show up when asked, and partnerships that amounted to little more than a signature and an instruction manual. What makes this conversation particularly interesting is Bill’s contrarian stance on best practices. Where most of the industry reaches for standardised benchmarks, he argues that these are snapshots of other people’s businesses that offer no competitive advantage whatsoever. Instead, his patented approach collects soft, qualitative feedback from both sides of the partnership, distributed carefully across the touch points between the organisations, so that marketing people answer marketing questions and finance people answer finance questions. Weighted, scaled and compared against hard performance data, all gathered quarterly rather than annually, this feedback becomes, in his words, fact over time. We also dig into the practical realities behind his philosophy. Bill is refreshingly candid about the setbacks his company faced during the recession, about charging partners upfront fees, and about why raising your hand to become a partner remains the easiest and least meaningful gesture in business. His number one recommendation for anyone entering a business-to-business collaboration is wonderfully unglamorous: do your homework upfront, go and actually visit the people you intend to work with, and have a backup plan for when reality differs from your assumptions. Through my “Optimise Your Alliances” programme, you’ll gain fresh insights and practical tools to strengthen your alliances. By the end of this programme, you’ll be equipped with actionable strategies and a clear perspective on how to take your alliances to the next level. Find out more. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit petersimoons.substack.com

  4. Sep 23

    Beyond the Deal: Pat Finerty on Building Partnerships That Deliver Triple Wins

    Back in 2015, when this conversation was first recorded, SAS Institute stood at an interesting crossroads: a dominant force in advanced analytics, yet facing a market transformed by cloud computing, open source platforms and the rise of big data. This republished episode of the Collaborative Business Podcast offers a rare window into how one of the industry’s most experienced partnership leaders navigates that shifting landscape. Pat Finerty was, at the time of recording, Vice President of Alliances and Business Development at SAS, responsible for the company’s partner ecosystem across Latin America and Canada. With a career in this field stretching back to the early 1990s, he brings a depth of perspective that few in the profession can match, and much of what he describes remains strikingly relevant for anyone working in strategic alliances today. The conversation opens with a deceptively simple principle that anchors the entire episode: a successful partnership must deliver a triple win, for the customer, for the vendor and for the partner. Finerty argues that too many organisations settle for a dual win and forget the customer entirely, a failure that ultimately undermines the alliance itself. He illustrates this with vivid examples, from massive global systems integrators such as Accenture and Deloitte embedding analytics into enterprise transformations, to a boutique partner who built an entire fuel retail optimisation practice on top of SAS technology. What makes this episode particularly valuable is Finerty’s candour about the challenges. There is, he freely admits, no magic answer to the perennial question of partner focus. SAS receives hundreds of partner suggestions from its long-tenured account executives, each one sensible in isolation, yet the company must concentrate its investment on repeatable, proven offerings rather than bespoke arrangements for every client. His reflections on managing a partner ten times SAS’s size, through dedicated relationship teams interlocking with local market organisations, offer a masterclass in multi-level partner governance. The discussion ranges widely, covering the shift from premise-based subscriptions to continuously evolving cloud offerings, the emergence of managed analytics service providers, and the deliberate injection of millennial talent into an organisation renowned for employee longevity. Finerty closes with the advice he considers paramount for newcomers to alliances: “Nothing works if you don’t build trust with both your clients and your business partners. Trust comes from demonstrating integrity and commitment over time. It takes time to develop trust, but it doesn’t take much time to destroy it.” Whether you are a seasoned alliance professional or simply curious about how software ecosystems really function, this episode rewards careful listening with practical wisdom, generously shared. With another three episodes left to republish, the “what’s next” question comes up: would you be interested in listening to a new round of alliance conversations in the podcast, and if so, who would you recommend as my guest(s)? Let me know in the comments. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit petersimoons.substack.com

  5. Sep 9

    From Procurement to Partnership: Why Your Best Innovation Might Be Sitting in Your Supply Base

    After an extended summer break, it’s time to bring back another episode of the Collaborative Business Podcast. In this episode, recorded in 2015 but perhaps more relevant today than ever, I’m in conversation with my friend and business partner Anoop Nathwani about the discipline of collaborative supplier relationship management and why so few organisations genuinely master it. Anoop’s credentials speak for themselves. With over two decades in strategic alliances, mostly in telecommunications at Vodafone, Hutchison and Nokia, he has since proven that partnership skills transfer well beyond telecoms. Back in 2010, while still at Nokia, he was moved from the alliance department into supplier relationships, charged with transforming transactional, customer-controlled dealings into collaborative ones. That experience anchors much of this conversation. The central argument of the episode is deceptively simple. A supplier you spend heavily with is a strategic customer relationship, not a strategic partnership. Volume alone does not make a partner. True supplier relationship management means identifying the suppliers with the greatest positive impact on your strategy, not merely the largest invoices, and then investing in those relationships to unlock innovation, growth and competitive advantage, alongside the more familiar cost reductions. What makes this episode genuinely challenging is its honesty about the obstacles. Anoop describes the near-zero-sum mindset of traditional procurement, the difficulty of asking someone who squeezed a supplier hard yesterday to be its trusted partner today, and why so many in-house attempts at supplier relationship management quietly fail. He cites a major oil and gas company that blazed a trail by hiring former sales and alliance professionals to manage its most strategic supplier relationships, separating negotiation from relationship building entirely. He also describes the shifting role of procurement itself, which must become an internal champion of collaboration, spending as much energy aligning stakeholders as it does dealing with suppliers. His conclusion is blunt: perhaps two per cent of large companies truly know how to partner with suppliers, and the rest are leaving enormous value on the table. Whether you sit in procurement, finance or general management, this episode offers a practical framework, grounded in real transformation stories, for turning your supply base from a line item into a source of lasting strategic advantage. Listening time is around thirty minutes, well spent for anyone serious about unlocking the value hidden in their supply chain. With another four episodes left to republish, the “what’s next” question comes up: would you be interested in listening to a new round of alliance conversations in the podcast, and if so, who would you recommend as my guest(s)? Let me know in the comments. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit petersimoons.substack.com

  6. May 13

    Remix Strategy and the Three Laws of Business Combinations

    In this republished episode, I’m in conversation with Ben Gomes-Casseres, a longtime thinker and practitioner in the world of alliances and partnership strategy. Ben first joined me back in early 2015 to look ahead at alliance developments, and it was a real pleasure to welcome him back, this time to talk about his then-new book, Remix Strategy. If you listened to my previous episode with Russ Buchanan from Xerox, you already heard a strong endorsement of Ben’s work, and in this conversation you’ll also hear Xerox come up again in a way that’s genuinely coincidental. I love it when the threads connect like that across episodes, because it underlines the broader point: collaboration isn’t a side topic anymore; it’s a core part of how companies compete and evolve. Ben and I start with the personal, including his background growing up on Curaçao and even a small but telling story about why he added a dash to his name in the United States, an example of how context matters when you’re trying to make things work across boundaries. From there, we move quickly into the heart of the episode: what Ben means by “remix,” and why it’s such a useful way to think about strategy today. Borrowing from music and visual art, Ben describes remixing as taking existing elements and combining them in a way that creates something new and valuable. He then applies that idea to business, where companies combine assets and capabilities through alliances, joint ventures, ecosystems, and mergers and acquisitions. The conversation really comes alive when Ben explains the three laws that sit at the center of his book. The first is the classic idea that the combination must create additional value, his memorable shorthand is that 1 + 1 must equal more than 2. The second law is about making that potential real: once you combine, you have to manage the pieces so they operate as one. And the third law addresses a topic many teams avoid discussing openly: value capture. If you grow the pie together, you still have to share it in a way that keeps both sides committed and makes the governance work. We also explore what happens when you scale these ideas beyond two-party deals into multi-partner constellations, from airlines to technology ecosystems to industrial collaborations. If you lead alliances, work in business development, or sit in the C-suite trying to make external partnerships deliver real returns, this episode will give you a clear lens, and practical language, for thinking about how combinations create value, how they succeed, and why they fail. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit petersimoons.substack.com

    Remix Strategy and the Three Laws of Business Combinations

  7. May 6

    Alliances in a Complex World

    Alliances in a Complex World In this republished episode of the Collaborative Business Podcast brings a conversation that goes straight to the heart of modern partnership strategy. My guest is Russ Buchanan, at the moment of recording Vice President of Worldwide Alliances at Xerox, a leader whose career spans decades in high-tech, sales, general management, and, most notably, building and running alliance programs at scale. Together, we explore what it really means to collaborate in today’s increasingly complex business environment, and why partnering is no longer a side activity but an essential capability. The discussion begins by putting Xerox into context. For many people, the name still evokes photocopiers and paper, but Russ paints a far broader picture: Xerox remains a major global technology provider, yet its services business has grown even larger, spanning business process outsourcing and solutions across industries. From benefits management to finance and accounting operations to healthcare IT services, Xerox focuses on using technology to improve the business processes customers rely on. That shift, from products to diversified solutions, sets the stage for why alliances matter so much. Russ then breaks down Xerox’s working definition of “documents” in a digital age, reframing them as information organised for human understanding, unstructured content that includes everything from spreadsheets to web pages. With that lens, the episode moves into the real theme: strategic alliances as a way to combine complementary capabilities to solve problems in new ways. Russ is candid about the driving rationale: the world is too big and complicated for any company to believe all the smartest people sit inside its own walls. You will also hear how go-to-market models vary depending on the offer, the market, and who leads. Russ distinguishes traditional channel partnerships from deeper services collaborations where both parties often stay engaged in selling and delivery. Our conversation expands into ecosystems, multi-partner arrangements that add complexity but can unlock more comprehensive solutions, along with the governance and trust such structures demand. To close, Russ offers a practical recommendation: treat collaboration as a discipline as well as an art, and learn from experts and practitioner communities. Whether you’re building alliances, joining an ecosystem, or simply trying to innovate faster, this episode delivers a grounded, experience-based perspective on how partnerships create measurable impact. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit petersimoons.substack.com

    Alliances in a Complex World

  8. Apr 29

    Going Far Together: Stakeholder Engagement Beyond the Comfort Zone

    In this republished episode of the Collaborative Business Podcast, I sat down with not one but two guests: Elke Jeurissen and Cato Léonard, co-founders of Glassroots and co-authors of a book on stakeholder management. Their work revolves around a simple premise that many leaders find uncomfortable: today’s challenges are too complex to solve from inside one organization, one department, or one familiar network. Real progress requires engaging the right mix of stakeholders, inside and outside the organization, and creating the conditions in which they can build something together. Elke and Cato describe stakeholder engagement as more than “managing stakeholders” in a series of bilateral conversations. Instead, they focus on bringing stakeholders together in one shared process, allowing different perspectives, mandates, and incentives to surface at the same time. The conversation explores what separates partnerships that deliver results from those that get stuck in endless meetings. One recurring theme is the necessity of a clear, shared goal: without agreement on what the group is trying to achieve, and why each participant is there, collaboration becomes talk without traction. The episode also highlights what it takes to make multi-stakeholder collaboration work in practice. Professional process design, transparent project management, measurable checkpoints, and clarity on responsibilities help turn goodwill into momentum. Just as importantly, Elke and Cato emphasize the human side: trust doesn’t appear automatically, especially when businesses, governments, academics, and non-profits bring different cultures and languages to the same table. Trust is built by acknowledging the initial lack of it, asking the right questions early, and creating an environment where differing interests can be expressed without derailing the common objective. Listeners will also hear why diversity is not a slogan but a strategic ingredient. If everyone brings the same “piece of the puzzle,” the group stays in its existing frame. The discipline of stakeholder mapping, looking beyond the usual peer group and identifying who can, will, and wants to contribute, can elevate the outcome to a higher level. Along the way, the guests reflect on the role of technology, transparency, and the speed of change as forces that make stakeholder engagement less optional and more essential. This episode is a practical invitation to lead with curiosity and courage: to admit what you don’t have, reach beyond your comfort zone, and build the kind of collaboration that helps you go far, together. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit petersimoons.substack.com

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Conversations with experts in the field of alliances & partnerships and with business owners and entrepreneurs who have built their businesses thanks to collaborations. The show aims to be an inspirational source for the listeners to provide useful insights to the best ways of working together in business-to-business collaboration. petersimoons.substack.com

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