The Power of Two : How Smart Companies Create Win:Win Customer- Supplier Partnerships That Outperform the Competition

__The Power of Two__ presents the best way for your company to increase competitive advantage. By forming close collaborative relationships with a small set of customers and suppliers you can achieve a significant cost advantage over your competitors, increase your market share and achieve significant top line growth. The Power of Two presents the best way for your company to increase its competitive advantage. By forming close collaborative relationships with a small set of customers and/or suppliers you can achieve a significant cost advantage over your competitors, you can increase your market share, achieve significant top line growth, and create competencies that cannot be copied. The ideas presented here are the result of several years of research, exploring these ideas with thousands of executives at IMD, and working as consultants to firms implementing the concepts. This book has many examples where powerful collaborative relations have been developed between a carefully chosen customer and supplier. In each case the customer and the supplier have recognized their mutual need to jointly overhaul the way they do business. It is not easy, but there is no doubt that it can be done. Not with all customers or suppliers, but with a carefully chosen few - ones where the necessary trust can be established, mechanisms developed to resolve the inevitable differences in opinions/ perceptions, and win-win becomes a clearly shared objective Picking ten partners Mastering the four stages of collaboration Restructuring procurement Selling the way your customer wants to buy Choosing your battles wisely Developing pairs of aces Building the future Changing two at a time Harnessing the power of two.