Global Recession: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

 

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JOINT VENTURES AND PARTNERSHIPS IN A DOWNTURN

by James Bamford, Gerard Baynham, and David Ernst

Companies will need every tool they’ve got to survive the downturn and rev up their businesses as the economy rights itself. They’ll have to rewire operations, reallocate resources, and in some cases reinvent business models.

At many firms, joint ventures and partnerships will play an outsize role in those efforts, both as a vehicle for sharing costs and reducing capital needs during the crisis and as a way to position themselves for growth once it ends. After all, in industries experiencing great pressure—like automotive, retail, and upstream oil and gas—joint ventures (JVs) are quite common. GM and Volkswagen, for example, each have several ...