You'll get an earful on how convoluted agency practices can bring commerce to a grinding halt. This is likewise true when for-profit businesses buddy up with nonprofits. Perhaps the most vivid public enactment of new-partner discomfort was the odd fit of America Online and Time Warner, as revealed in the clumsy public hugs and seemingly forced collegiality of the respective chairmen, Steve Case and Gerald Levin, on the day their merger was announced. In the prefrictionless world, there might have been time to work through culture clashes. Now, however, with speed as the prevailing virtue, there may not be.
Any company crossing borders into a new industry had better be fast, efficient and effective.
Companies can't afford to get bogged down over whether one industry's standard operating procedures are better than another's. Businesses either need to learn the ways of prospective partners before they enter the fray or be prepared to quickly and flexibly adapt their own ways to keep commerce flowing. There seems to be a dangerous assumption that successful business models, once created, can be happily replicated almost indefinitely. But to imagine that they will work frictionlessly with business partners from another world is myopic at best. Sure, these added activities are all based on traditional retail businesses.