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Benefits of a strategic partnership
Strategic partnership is popular due to various reasons, such as:
•    Offering complementary products and services to their market
•    Opportunity to gain new capacity and expertise
•    Gain new technological knowledge
•    Allow companies to compare their corporate culture productively
•    Access to great new resources
•    Sharing risk with a venture partner
Drawback of a strategic partnership
A strategic partnership often requires significant reconstruction of business and goals. Usually both parties have to review their business strategy to complement each other. There are few risks involved in strategic partnership and that are:
•    Requires time and effort to build a productive relationship
•    Increased chances of conflicts
•    Raise questions concerning the ownership of new invention or intellectual property
•    Imbalance in the level of experts, resources and assets
•    Difference in cultural and management style often results in poor co-ordination
Despite the risks involved, rewards are high if strategic partnership is utilized in true sense.
Strategic partnership agreement
When two companies evaluate each other for strategic partnership, the key part is the strategic partnership agreement. The agreement ensures clarity right from the beginning, prevent arguments and misunderstandings and help business get the most out of partnership. This is why it is advisable to seek legal advice before coming to and drawing up the agreement.
These are the essential aspects of a strategic partnership agreement:
•    Aim and objective: Clearly specify aims like revenue generation, creating a stable credibility in market, cost reduction etc.
•    Non-financial contribution: Non-financial contribution can be visibility on each other websites and promotional campaigns.
•    Financial gain: State out clearly the financial gains involved, it can be in the form of resource supply or the amount of investment.
•    Ownership of intellectual property: Joint ventures sometimes result in new inventions; even creating new logos collaboratively can raise the question of ownership. Always specify how the intellectual properties will be distributed.
•    Evaluation dates: the reason for strategic partnership is to gain benefit in the business world. Set evaluation dates to review how much both parties are benefiting or loosing for the partnership to take place.