will enter into partnerships that serve its own parochial interests, often without realizing or without regard for the impact on other parts of the organization or the company as a whole. It is not surprising that alliance formation decisions are often local matters and that coordination across units in the organization tends to be limited. Because business problems, and thus alliance formation opportunities, often are located in different units within an organization, problem owners are rarely the same individual. The issues associated with creating an alliance tend to affect different managers, who may interact with one another rarely, if ever. From an alliance portfolio perspective, such bottom-up alliance formation decision making is especially problematic when decision makers focus exclusively on criteria relevant to their local business problems and ignore how the new alliance fits into the company’s alliance portfolio. Companies implement patchwork solutions that address problems for parts of a company but may actually create new troubles for other parts. The net result is often a failure to create value for the company overall — or, worse, a destruction of value overall.