Enhance the Capacity to Learn This Paragraph states that whether collaboration leads to competitive surrender or revitalization depends foremost on what the employees believe the purpose of the alliance to be. It also states that western companies need to be more receive and they need to cut down on their arrogance dorne of decades of leadership. An example stated in the paragraph states a statement about a senior executive of an electronics company on the perception that Japanese companies learn from their foreign partners rather than vice versa. In return he says that “our western partners approach us with the attitude of teachers, but we are quite happy with this, because we have the attitude of students”. Moreover, learning begins at the top, the senior managements must be committed to enhancing their companies ‘skills as well as to avoiding financial risk. Because the employees not only represent the frontline defense of the company but they also play a vital roles in acquiring knowledge. Basically they must be well briefed on their competitors weaknesses and understand how acquiring particular skills will boost their company’s competitive position. It then goes on to state that collaboration does not always provide an opportunity to fully internalize a partners skills, yet but just by acquiring new and more precise benchmarks of a partners performance can be of a great value. Competitive benchmarking is a tradition that most Japanese companies follow. Proceed with care but Proceed After world war 2, Japanese and Korean companies entered alliances with their western rivals from weak positions. But they worked steadfastly toward independence. In the early 1960’s, NEC’s business was about a quarter of the size of Honeywell, its for ...