Some early insights into the power and value of supply chain partnerships appeared in We're All In This Together, a Harvard Business Review article by Douglas M. Lambert and A. Michael Knemeyer of The Ohio State University.  The brief piece dealt with a Wendy's/Tyson partnership, and described the outline of a Partnership Model and a four-celled matrix structure for classifying partnership potentials into high-value and low-value targets.

Those concepts have matured considerably, and are fully described in the recent book, Building High Performance Business Relationships by Lambert, Knemeyer, and John T. Gardner.  A summary of the key components of partnership programs was recently presented to a Breakfast Club meeting at Ohio State's Fisher College of Business.  It outlined a comprehensive set of specific elements in families of Drivers, Facilitators, Components, and Outcomes that lead to supply chain partnership success.

The plusses, as I see them, are: 1) the wealth of case-based real-world partnership accomplishments involving major corporations, and 2) the richness of detail involved in constructing, analyzing, and refining partnership practices.  I'd like to see more examples of breakthroughs involving "followers" along with those somewhat expected of "leaders."  Some academics have recently suggested (in CSCMP's Journal of Business Logistics) that the net impact of adopting positive practices by the real world's many followers is considerably greater than the contributions of the relatively few leaders in the field.

That said, I recommend getting an understanding of this perspective on partnerships, giving some thought to how the principles might apply to the world beyond supplier/customer relationships, and considering what the human dimensions of making these partnerships work might be.

I'd be interested in hearing what you think about the approach described.