IBM has improved its business performance and created value for customers through numerous strategic alliances. These cooperative strategies have lead to new sources of competitive advantage and have benefitted both IBM and its alliance partners. Identify how alliances have benefitted a large company like IBM and why it didn't just conduct business on its own. Alliances are often very cost-effective and even large firms don't possess all the necessary expertise. Identify and other firms that use alliances will alliances will be used more or less in the future than they are today.

Have large U.S. firms have been over governed by some corporate governance mechanisms and under governed by others; provide an example of each.