Program Experience

Highlights and Key Outcomes

In Managing Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystems, you will learn how to:

  • Gain access to new knowledge, technologies, and markets through alliances
  • Position your firm as a preferred alliance partner
  • Become a more effective negotiator when entering and managing alliances
  • Reduce your exposure to and mitigate the effects of enterprise risks
  • Anticipate and resolve business conflicts to improve alliance performance
  • Understand how to manage complex, multi-partner alliance ecosystems

This program complements Mergers and Acquisitions, which focuses on valuation and legal issues that arise in a strategic alliance.

Experience & Impact

Managing Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystems teaches research-based techniques for designing, forming, and maintaining alliances. A strong focus of this hands-on program is showing you how to apply these techniques to your firm’s real-world challenges and experiences. Through case studies, experiential learning, interactive exercises, and advice from industry experts, you will discover a better way to respond to new market opportunities, facilitate time to market, find complementary resources, and gain new skills and technologies through partnerships.

This program will help you build your firm’s alliance capability, making you an alliance “partner of choice.” You will learn how to identify and offset your company’s unique liabilities, develop a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness, and find ways to add value to an alliance. You will also discover how to determine when to enter into a partnership and — equally as important — when to leave one. Using alliances to mitigate the effects of economic, geographic, and political risks as well as managing networks of alliances and understanding how they affect overall corporate strategies are also explored.

Wharton LIVE Online Programming

Real-time peer learning with deep faculty engagement and global networking

The live, online version of Managing Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystems is a multi-day program that will be delivered online and taught by the same Wharton faculty who teach in the on-campus program. The online sessions are structured to allow for extensive Q&A so that participants can discuss their respective business challenges.

Participants will have direct access to Wharton faculty throughout the program and engage in dynamic group exercises that help reinforce the learning and enable networking among the peer community.

This online program is a fully immersive and structured learning experience that culminates with a new set of knowledge and tools that can be put to immediate use.

Program Duration:

Mar. 10 – 14, 2025
Jun. 16 – 20, 2025

Managing Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystems will also include multiple opportunities for you to get to know the other participants and build your professional network. These sessions include:

Q&A Networking Forum

During these sessions, faculty will examine and discuss the most promising opportunities and most significant challenges participants' organizations are facing. Participants act as a sounding board while simultaneously identifying the commonalities that connect the issues across organizations.

Session topics include:

  • Growth Strategy and the Role of Partnerships and Ecosystems
  • Creating Competitive Advantage
  • Alliance Structure and Dynamics
  • Strategy and the Role of Alliances
  • Negotiating a Partnership (Lecture and Exercises)
  • Leveraging Innovation Ecosystems
  • Corporate Strategy and Acquisitions

Convince Your Supervisor

Here’s a justification letter you can edit and send to your supervisor to help you make the case for attending this Wharton program.


Due to our application review period, applications submitted after 12:00 p.m. ET on Friday for programs beginning the following Monday may not be processed in time to grant admission. Applicants will be contacted by a member of our Client Relations Team to discuss options for future programs and dates.

Who Should Attend

Executives with responsibilities for growth initiatives, whether introducing innovations, finding new markets, or looking at new technologies will benefit from this program. Additionally, those who manage alliances and work in business or corporate development (including general managers, strategic planning managers and marketing managers) and financial officers involved with financing new ventures or mergers and acquisitions can also benefit.

Fluency in English, written and spoken, is required for participation in Wharton Executive Education programs unless otherwise indicated.


Participant Profile

Participants by Industry

Building and Sustaining Growth through Strategic Alliances participants by industry

Participants by Job Function

Building and Sustaining Growth through Strategic Alliances participants by job function

Participants by Region

Building and Sustaining Growth through Strategic Alliances participants by region


Plan your stay in Philadelphia

Plan Your Stay

This program is held at the Steinberg Conference Center located on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia. Meals and accommodations are included in the program fees. Learn more about planning your stay at Wharton’s Philadelphia campus.


Group Enrollment

To further leverage the value and impact of this program, we encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to Wharton. We offer group-enrollment benefits to companies sending four or more participants.

Faculty


Harbir Singh

Harbir Singh, PhDSee Faculty Bio

Academic Director

Mack Professor; Professor of Management; Co-Director, Mack Institute for Innovation Management; Wharton School Faculty Director for the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business, The Wharton School

Research Interests: Corporate governance, corporate restructuring, management buyouts, strategies for corporate acquisitions


Prashant Kale

Prashant Kale, PhDSee Faculty Bio

Associate Professor of Strategic Management, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University


Rahul Kapoor

Rahul Kapoor, PhDSee Faculty Bio

David W. Hauck Professor; Professor of Management, The Wharton School

Research Interests: Innovation, technology management and strategy, industry evolution, firm boundaries, business ecosystems

Testimonials


Attending this program further enhanced my business development competencies. Through the sharing of best practices within our diverse class, to learning from the extensive expertise of our professors, it broadened my understanding of how to further enhance my impact within my organization."

Joe Renda Director, US Leadership Training & Development, Pfizer


A triumph! Sustainable knowledge to create shareholder value. Not just a development opportunity, knowledge on how to succeed. Accessible faculty, real learning, challenging, and thought provoking — a key week in your development and your organization’s success. Don’t you want to learn about how to create sustainable competitive advantage?”

Strategic Planner, Health Care Insurance Organization


A wealth of research and insight on what is going on out there in a globalized world that increasingly depends on alliances to survive, compete, and build strategic core competencies and advantages.”

Business Development Manager, International Telecommunications Company

Date, Location, & Fees

If you are unable to access the application form, please email Client Relations at execed@wharton.upenn.edu.

March 10 – 14, 2025Live Online$9,850

June 16 – 20, 2025Live Online$9,850


Download the program schedule, including session details and format.

Download ScheduleApply Now

Hotel Information

Fees for on-campus programs include accommodations and meals. Prices are subject to change.

Read COVID-19 Safety Policy »

International Travel Information »

Plan Your Stay »


Contact Us

Schedule a personalized consultation to discuss your professional goals:

 +1.215.898.1776

 execed@wharton.upenn.edu

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