465 - From cooperative systems to the strategic alliance

N. Lygeros

Within the context of cognitive researches, one can prove that a group is more powerful than a unity. Its power not only comes from its constituents power but above all, from the effect of the synergy of its structure relying on relations and peculiarities. The elements of the group being quite rightly considered as basic ones, it is normal to wonder about their translation that is group quid when the elements are themselves groups. Thus, we naturally make toward cooperative systems that are almost managed by meta-rules like group rules as developed in the theory of games. Though it is a generalization, the structure is protected. In other words, everything works internally even if it can be carried out in various ways.
However, if we transpose the mental schemata of the theory of patterns of Grothendieck in a meta-heuristic context as we did in a previous article, then, it is possible to consider external action. It is precisely via this concept that we want to construe the strategic alliance once its main characteristics presented. A strategic alliance defines itself as an agreement made between two partners or more, direct rivals or not, in order to keep or reinforce the competitiveness of the contracting parties. The advantages expected from a strategic alliance are numerous. First, there is the sharing of research and development costs, then a faster access to globalisation and at last, a flexibility and an undeniable autonomy. As for its forms, they are as various as the motivations of partners. It can be an alliance about a common product or an alliance about a component or a semi-product; but also along different lines, an alliance based on exchange.

The contribution of the relevant alliance is external action. As a matter of fact, in all other cases it is possible to set a theoretical isomorphism with the notions of absorption, acquisition or fusion. In other words, the system is cooperative and only changes inside, even if it is global. Whereas, with external action, even if it is only global as a result, the structure changes not radically changing its constituents. It can also have a holistic form like the transposed idea of Grothendieck with structural modifications hardly discernable on a local level.
The basic point for the existence of this strategic alliance contribution is the awareness of the practical even theoretical impossibility for each of the constituents (such as partners of the alliance) to reach a given target. But, despite its utopian aspect via this approach of external action, it becomes a catalyst from a strategic point of view. It has not to be reached in one direct way, but in various indirect ways such as the polytopic network. From a structural point of view, we have an external element not dependent on a special element of the initial structure, but holistically dependent on all the constituents. Without the strategic alliance, it could not exist and generate the one of an emergent super-structure via its existence. Thus, the strategic alliance enables not only the practical achievement of impossible theoretical but above all, thanks to the external action it represents the possibility to define an a priori utopian target as a catalyst of a real transformation. Thus, it represents a radical creation.