In areas of the economy in which the underlying technology is moving rapidly organizations must struggle to be informed about current developments, especially as they affect the organization's mission. Firms in the IT industries have found that one very good way to be on top of IT developments is to form strategic alliances with other firms in the IT industry. These alliances have become a fact of life in the IT industries and have been accepted as a standard way of doing business.
Strategic alliances represent more than just hand-shake agreements between or among organizations.
Because they typically involve mission-critical aspects of an organization's activities, they are negotiated and maintained at the highest organizational level. Important alliances almost always involve the direct involvement of the chief executives of the organizations involved. They also involve more than just arms-length transactions. These alliances take years to create and evolve as the partnership and alliance matures. A sweeping university wide alliance at Penn State for example took two years to formulate and was conducted as a joint project with University officials and the Development office.