Session 1: Introduction to Organizational Design – Going It Alone Versus Partnering
What are alliances and when should you engage in them? What forces are driving their greater use? What is the spectrum of possible relationships? How do you assess the depth, breadth, and durability of an alliance to leverage opportunities? We provide tools for evaluating the risks and gains associated with partnering.
Session 2: Sponsorships
Sponsorships have been widely used in the arts, typically with corporate partners. Yet this seemingly simple relationship masks all manner of complexities. How does engaging in a high profile alliance influence your identity and shape future opportunities? We apply an assessment exercise to evaluate a notable sponsorship.
Session 3: Alliances
We turn to the business world to follow an alliance from conception to implementation. How can organizations profit from having another entity provide one of their core services or components? Our case offers insight into the transition from controlling to collaborating with a partner.
Session 4: Assembling a Portfolio of Partners
Increasingly, organizations build complex webs of alliances for different tasks, dealing with very diverse kinds of partners. How do organizations with a special skill manage to find collaborators who give them access to resources and audiences? We show how smaller organizations can thrive even in a world of giants.
Session 5: Network Tools
We introduce key concepts from network analysis that enable you to evaluate your own organization’s portfolio of relationships. We provide several examples to illustrate the different environments in which the arts exist. You will begin drawing a map of the key relationships in which your organization is involved.

Day Two

Session 6: Mapping your Organization’s Ecology
Hands on session in which you work with your fellow participants to develop sophisticated portraits of your set of partners and their activities.
Session 7: Presentation of Network Maps
All participants will exhibit maps of their organization’s relational networks. We will choose a subset for review and diagnose key features as well as elements that are absent. We will explore opportunities for new connections.
Session 8: Mergers
In some instances, the joining of two entities is necessary for survival or to derive significant value, whether in the form of cost savings, eliminating redundancy, or enhancing synergy. We use a case from the performing arts to examine the challenges with mergers in the arts.
Session 9: Clusters—Building a Community with Common Interests
In many fields, cluster -based models of competition and cooperation have developed in which the success of individual organizations is inextricably linked to the health of a larger community of inter-connected organizations. We provide an example of such a cluster from the California wine community and discuss potential applications to the Arts.
Session 10: Discussion of Take-Aways and Concluding Thoughts
Open discussion of key lessons and concepts, and a re-examination of the network maps in light of what we have learned.