Joining Forces: Making One Plus One Equal Three in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Alliances

Part V. Building M&A Competence

Soon after we began to study and advise merger, acquisition, and alliance partners, we observed a common factor in the ones that succeeded: managers made one or more significant midcourse corrections when implementing combination plans. A delay in technology convergence, for example, necessitated overhauls to the new product launch schedule in an information technology acquisition. Lingering animosity between two sales teams in an industrial products merger prompted a CEO to rethink and radically redesign the sales and marketing function. Culture clash in an alliance between a staid university research center and a nimble biotech start-up, that intended to draw from the "best-of-both," instead led the partners ...