Perhaps one of the lasting legacies of Internet companies will be the corporate title chief business development officer. Though the continuing slaughter of the dot-coms proves that many companies did a lot of things wrong, one thing most got right was the concept of partnering with other companies to grow faster and serve more customers—a basic business concept that has been spelled out in books like Coopetition
and The Trillion Dollar Enterprise. Keywell, president of HALO Branded Solutions, a marketing company, goes further, showing how partnerships that worked on the Internet can work for traditional companies. Though his hyperbolic tone, scored with hundreds of exclamation points, can be grating, he presents sound ideas in an orderly fashion. Following a summary of the advantages of partnering, he explains how to find potential partners and the basics of negotiating deals. The big flaw here is that Keywell doesn't directly address the well-chronicled problems with joint ventures: partners tend not to put their best people on such projects, and unless the project falls into each partner's core competency, it's unlikely to get sufficient funding. Still, with a recession looming, it's possible that marketing executives will be open to nearly any idea that can help them stretch their budgets. (June)
