What the Biggest Business Deals of 2019 Tell Us About the Next Decade
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Unlike the earth’s climate, the climate for business deals remained stubbornly unchanged…
Harvard Business Review Articles
The CVS-Aetna Merger Hinges on One Question: What Do Consumers Get Out of It?
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | November 7, 2017 The proposed merger of CVS and Aetna will test what it…
Acquiring Value: Strategies for M&A — HBR Webinar
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Webinar presented by HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Alliances, partnerships, acquisitions, mergers, and joint ventures are no longer exceptions…
Who Killed The GE Model?
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | This blog has gotten a lot of attention. The Wall Street Journal…
How Mergers and Partnerships Change The Way You Compete
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | M&A and partnership deals are at an all-time high. But what about…
What the Big Mergers of 2017 Tell Us About 2018
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | The great business remix of the last three years shows no sign of…
What Does Whole Foods Get from Amazon? Alexa, for Starters
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | All the talk about Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods has been about…
Why Your Partnership Contract Is Too Important to Be Left to the Lawyers
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Behind every partnership lurks an “incomplete contract” — a concept for which…
Mergers vs Regulators — Lessons from Halliburton, Pfizer, and Staples
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Regulatory authorities in the United States have been active in questioning mergers…
Three Types of Acquisitions — Lessons from Microsoft and LinkedIn
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn is big and bold — and likely to…
How Divestments Create Value — The Case of Yahoo!
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Just as the M&A party appears to be winding down, the divestment…
Sources of Joint Value — Questions About Pfizer-Allergan
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Pfizer and Allergan are set to merge in the biggest combination…
Personal Chemistry in Partnerships — Handle With Care
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | When I hear that two CEOs are striking a deal in…
The Strategy Behind the Deal — Questions About Dell-EMC
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | The news that Dell will acquire EMC is déjà vu all over…
The Three Laws of Business Combinations — Excerpt of Remix Strategy
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | When you look to external partners for acquiring resources and capabilities,…
BOOK: Remix Strategy — The Three Laws of Business Combinations
HBR Press Release What Is “Remix Strategy?” In contemporary music and art, a “remix” is a piece of media that…
From Rivals to Partners — IBM and Apple
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | The lynchpin of the new IBM-Apple alliance will be this simple…
Merger Are Partnerships Too — Trending Now
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Corporate marriage brokers are again fully employed. Every day a new deal…
The Business Remix — Trending Now
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Investment bankers are giddy at the prospect of increased M&A…
Exit and Loyalty — Yahoo and Tumbler
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | As Yahoo goes through with its acquisition of Tumblr, CEO Marissa Mayer…
The False Security of Contracts — HP vs Oracle
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Hewlett Packard and Oracle are embroiled in a marriage spat that would…
How to Manage Multiple Partnerships
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | If you think politicians have a tough time staying monogamous, take a…
Managing High-Stakes Partners
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | When I started to research business alliances over 25 years ago,…
A Partnership Is Not a Purchase Order
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Scott McNealy, ex-CEO of Sun Microsystems, tweeted this message last month: “Most…
Competing for Partners — Japan Airlines, Delta, and AA
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Japan Airlines has chosen to stay hitched to American Airlines and…
Learning by Joint Venture — NUMMI
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Last week, Toyota announced it will close the plant of New…
Outsourcing: Where Will You Draw the Line?
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | The Defense Department is due to report to Congress that…
Microsoft and Yahoo: Too Little, Too Late, Too Hyped
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | It took over a year to for Microsoft and Yahoo to to…
Group versus Group: How Alliance Networks Compete
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | Collaboration in business is no longer confined to conventional two-company alliances, such…
Other Online Articles
In 2018, Did Business Get Too Big?
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | In THE NEW YORK TIMES | December 21, 2018 The number of mega mergers announced this year raises…
Why Your Next Deal May Be a Partnership
By Bob Saada and Ben Gomes-Casseres | In STRATEGY+BUSINESS | December 3, 2018 More than a quarter-century of global data on alliances…
The Amazon-Morgan-Berkshire Partnership Balloon
By Ben Gomes-Casseres This blog was cited in The New York Times’s DealBook (January 30, 2018): The effort focuses on…
The 10 most remarkable deals — and busts — of 2016
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in PBS MAKING SEN$E | Editor’s note: Even if the volume of mergers and acquisitions fell short…
The “Curse of Bigness” Today
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in PBS MAKING SEN$E | Portions of this article are from the author’s article in Harvard Business Review,…
10 Most Remarkable Deals of 2015
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in MARKETWATCH | In this banner year for corporate deals, some have been impressive and others less…
The Great Remix: Why Mergers are Booming
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in HUFFINGTON POST | Another day, another merger. Telephone companies, drug companies, drugstores, airlines, hospitals, retail stores,…
5 Tips for the Right Way to Do Business With Friends
(Review of a blog based on Remix Strategy.) Forging alliances and making strategic partnerships is an important decision, But basing a…
Column: Why mergers are booming
By Ben Gomes-Casseres | Originally in PBS MAKING SEN$E | Editor’s Note: According to preliminary data from Thomson Reuters, $3.19 trillion in deals were…
Creating Joint Value
(Strategic Alliance Magazine) In Biopharma and many other industries, “Not Invented Here” is SO Last Century. Joint value is the…
Outsource, Don’t Abdicate
(CIO Magazine) The term “outsourcing” is an unfortunate one. With every outsourced task comes a new responsibility to govern that…
Can AOL and Google Marriage Work?
The Providence Journal Op-Ed (2005) Google’s billion-dollar engagement ring to AOL will not buy love, but it will buy bragging…
Alliance Sweet Talk: Tough Questions Worth Asking
(Milestone Group Newsletter) How should investors react when they catch high-tech CEOs singing love songs to each other? First, with…
Another Enron Casualty: Trust in Partnerships
(Unpublished Op-Ed) Enron “partnerships” give bad name to cooperative ventures. But Enron experience also shows investors must consider the alliances…
Relationship Lessons from the Ford-Firestone Breakup
(Bridge Forum Op-Ed) Firestone’s breakup with Ford is the most public corporate divorce in recent memory. But it is far…
American Airlines and British Airways
(Providence Journal Op-Ed) U.S. Justice Department blocks AA-BA deal. It does not believe that AA and BA could cooperate in…
Xerox and Fuji Xerox
(Associated Press – excerpted) Restructuring of Fuji Xerox provides opportunity to draw lessons from its past success. Available here.
Strategy Must Lie at the Heart of Alliances
(Financial Times) Alliances formed at high levels, often blessed with the designation “strategic”, have often failed to deliver. The problem:…
Microsoft Verdict Reveals Dark Side of Strategic Alliances
(Unpublished Op-Ed) Judge Penfield Jackson’s verdict in the Microsoft anti-trust case last week should be required reading for any corporate…
Alliance and Risk: Securing a Place in the Victory Parade
(Financial Times) Alliances can help companies hedge between competing technology standards and reduce the costs of major strategic change by…
Videos: The Social Contract Between Business and Society
By Ben Gomes-Casseres I am honored to occupy the Peter A. Petri Chair in Business and Society at Brandeis University,…