Orange Group’s Open Seamless Alliance™ - Organizational Innovation for Value-creating Partnerships

The Open Seamless Alliance is a collaboration initiative set up by Mobistar, a partly-owned subsidiary of France Telecom to administer and federate roaming activities (interfaces, pricing, service features, etc) in a club-like open alliance. Members adhere to a fair process of collaboration. The case focuses on the challenges facing the management and leadership of the alliance as it widens its geographic scope and attemps to move from shared "back office" services to value-differentiating "front office" services.

The objective is to illustrate the concept of a multilateral alliance where agreement on a fair shared process precedes specific substantive collaboration efforts. In particular, the case focuses on how trust is built by the alliance leaders and on how the commitment and roles of various members are affected by geographic and demographic characteristics. It also allows students to review the challenges involved in moving from a "back-office" utility alliance to a "front-office" value-creating alliance.