Strategic alliances: strategic alliances are an agreement between two or more companies to work together for a certain period in order to achieve some business objectives, help each other achieve new technologies or to be able to build core competencies against other competitors. The traditional view of strategic alliances is that they are formed for: - Defensive to protect profits - Means to get ahead of competition - Competitiveness and win-lose orientation. While nowadays there is a current perspective on strategic alliance that goes beyond the traditional vision and consists of: - Collaboration can create opportunities for success for all participants - It can create multiple sources of competitive advantage - Win † win orientation it is based on both collaboration and competition. Strategic alliances could be formed for the following reasons: 1) Technology exchange: Most of the recent strategic alliances (more than 50%) are formed for technology exchange. this is done to obtain the capabilities and resources necessary to create new technology or use some technologies to develop companies' skills.2) Global competition: strategic alliances are formed to allow partners to gain greater strength and be able to be more compete in the global market against a common enemy better than each individual fighting alone. 3) Industrial Convergence: By this means the company comes together and becomes one company to achieve more success in a certain industry. Strategic risk facing alliances: Most alliances that work are made between two companies in industrial countries. But any type of strategic alliance also has some risks that could occur during this partnership: - Strategic alliances are sometimes used by partners to create competitive advantages against each other, or could even make one partner stronger than the other will succeed to steal more market shares from it. This will result in the creation of a new competitor for a partner who may enter into a strategic alliance. To avoid this risk, the partners sign for example an agreement that, once the period of the strategic alliance ends, the partner is not allowed to use this certain technology before at least 3 years time.- The inability of the partners to take advantage or to carry out the technology transfer between the two partners. This can be avoided by trying to understand the different cultures of the two partners and what could be the best way for the two parties to communicate and exchange technology in a fair and equitable manner.- Another risk is leadership. Who will control who? Who will make decisions in strategic alliances?