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Business model · Plan

Alliance and partnership design

Designs the alliance after make-buy-partner has chosen it — contribution, governance, decision rights, and the exit clause everybody skips.

The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.

Stage
04 Plan
Works at
Corporate, Business
Maturity
Scaling → Large organisation
Time
One week

What it is

Where make-buy-partner leaves off. Choosing to partner is a strategic decision; designing the partnership so it survives contact with reality is a separate discipline, and alliances fail far more often on governance than on the strategic logic that justified them.

Contribution
What each side specifically brings — capital, capability, market access, brand, technology — stated in enough detail that both sides could later point to whether it was actually delivered.
Integration depth
How tightly the two organisations' operations, systems and people need to work together for the alliance to function, from a loose commercial agreement to something close to a merger of the relevant function.
Governance and decision rights
Who decides what, and by what process, when the two organisations disagree — the alliance equivalent of a RACI, agreed before the first disagreement rather than during it.
Performance measurement
What success looks like for each side, specifically, and how it will be tracked — alliances frequently fail quietly because the two sides were never measuring the same thing.
The exit clause
How the alliance ends and who keeps what when it does — triggers, notice periods, and the disposition of any shared assets or intellectual property. Negotiated before commitment, because it cannot be negotiated fairly once one side wants out.
The mistake people makeDesigning everything except the exit — the clause everybody skips because negotiating it feels like planning for failure. It is the opposite: an alliance with no agreed exit is negotiated under maximum pressure exactly when trust is lowest.
What it’s forPartnering has been chosen as the route to a capability and the specific terms of the alliance now need designing.
What it’s not forThe choice between build, buy and partner has not yet been made. This tool designs a partnership already decided on, and does not make the case for choosing one.

How you run it

  1. State each side's contribution specificallyCapital, capability, access, brand, technology — specific enough that either side could later check whether it was delivered.
  2. Decide the integration depth requiredFrom a loose commercial agreement to something close to a merger of the relevant function. Match the governance to this, not the reverse.
  3. Design the governance and decision-rights structureWho decides what, and by what process, when the two sides disagree. Agreed now, not improvised during the first real disagreement.
  4. Agree what success looks like for both sidesExplicitly — alliances frequently fail quietly because the two sides were tracking different definitions of working.
  5. Write the exit clause before committingTriggers, notice periods, and what happens to shared assets or intellectual property. The one clause everybody skips, and the one that matters most when it is needed.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans — from £19 a month

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

  • What each side is contributing, specifically rather than in general terms
  • How tightly the two organisations need to integrate to make the alliance work
  • What success and failure would each look like, and over what time horizon

You’ll end up with

  • Contribution and value split, stated explicitly for both sides
  • A governance and decision-rights structure for the alliance
  • An exit clause agreed before the alliance starts, not negotiated under pressure when it is ending

Runs well with

AI operating model optionsAI risk classification and governanceAssumption logBackcasting