Responding to Digital Disruption through Alliances

Incumbents find it difficult to respond successfully to the digital disruption, they may not recognize or take proper measure of the threat early enough and find it hard to develop and implement a timely and effective response. In this paper, based on academic research and personal managerial experience, the authors propose a way for strategic alliances between incumbent competitors to enable the development of successful responses to disruption. The approach runs counter to conventional wisdom in alliance management, on partner selection, sequence of alliance building steps, the move from exploitation alliances, and the governance mechanisms and leadership principles required for success. These differences are described and analyzed.