The road to success is travelled best with partners and fellow travelers who can complement each other’s capabilities in good and bad times. So often do alliances and partnership fall in the trap of “give and take” and matchmaking their efforts without focusing and determining their core purpose and joint value. These relationships become transactional and stale and fade over time.

But if they are inspired by the right vision and objectives that drive an energized team they can amplify each other and drive their joint value with velocity in the market.

As an example: In his last corporate role Matty led the EMEA alliance between Intel and Red Hat. This alliance is obvious to the technology community but needs a bit more explanation for a non-technical audience. To quickly explain the value, he branded the partnership using a quote from the Intel CEO during a hot chips keynote to summarize and clarify the partnership in four simple words:  ‘Software Defined, Silicon enhanced’. This became the mantra for the alliance and the anchor theme is still in use today!