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Daimler and Renault signed a strategic alliance sharing competencies and technologies. The alliance is about creating platform projects for components of the new cars. Each company has its components to realize. With this alliance Daimler is changing its traditional business model: the company decided to swicht to the production of small car, where Renault has its core busines competencies. This partnership can also bring the German company in contact with the field of the new electric cars, in which Reanult is well advanced. 

Nokia and Microsoft, who have always been at odds in the battle for smartphone operating systems, have now formed an alliance for mobile applications. The idea is to bring personal productivity (Office) tools on Nokia (Symbian) phones and fight against growing market share by RIM (Blackberry phones).

Within the next two years, BMW will save 5.2 billion dollars thanks to the agreement with Mercedes for the development and sharing of components not visible to the customer including, for example, air conditioners or window regulator motors. According to Bloomberg agency reported, this target would be the result of a conservative estimate and might even generate a substantial surplus. This result is convincing largely attribute to the new 7 Series, with full sales and first recipient model of joint activities. That kind of odd alliance means the two carmakers are going to share component suppliers, so instead of a two actors alliance it could be considered a three subjects agreement. The third part involved are the common suppliers.

Today, Yahoo! and Nokia, announced a worldwide strategic alliance to extend the reach of their industry leading online services and offer people rich experiences that keep them connected to their world and the world around them. Building on more than five years of collaboration, Nokia and Yahoo! will leverage each others' strengths in e-mail, instant messaging and maps and navigation services, to provide consumers with access to world-class experiences on both PC and mobile devices. As part of the alliance: Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo!'s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo! properties, branded as "powered by Ovi." Yahoo! will become the exclusive, global provider of Nokia's Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as "Ovi Mail / Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!" Nokia and Yahoo! plan to work on ID federation between their services, beginning by making it easy for people to use their Ovi user IDs across select Yahoo! properties to easily access the online content and services they need.

Daimler and BYD (China) plan to establish a development center to combine the German automaker's expertise in automotive engineering with BYD's battery and low-cost production know-how. The companies aim to create a new brand for the vehicle that will be positioned between BYD and Mercedes models. Development time may take about three years. Daimler said last month it will focus on cleaner technologies to take global market share from rivals BMW and Audi.

The article does not directly have to do with innovation, but provides an interesting perspective on the strategic challenges that luxury carmakers have when dealing with macro-trends such as an ageing customer base, emerging markets, downsizing (and low margins), etc.

In order to provide a better communication between the corporate seat and the foreign branches in Germany, and to manage the whole organisation and data, FIAT adopted a new Corporate Planner. The strengths of this application are the compatibility with the older ones, the flexibility of the system and the real time management. Actually, this can be a starting point to solve the huge internal communication problems of the Fiat Group Automobiles, created by the new alliance with Chrysler. If it works correctly,it will be extended to the whole company.

Realising the limitations of their own knowledge, and internal R&D capabilities, an increasingly high number of companies are currently making the decision of partnering externally to develop new technologies. Companies' interactions with their business partners or even competitors are becoming more and more frequent. Since the potential for innovation increases consequently when people from various background interact, co-innovation or co-development partnerships are very efficient means to innovate. The term co-innovation, or co-development, refers to the extension of external partnerships and alliances in order to have access to, and to exploit new knowledge, new technologies, or new markets.

German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel is trying to mark the future of the electric and hybrid vehicles founding the "National Platform for Electric Mobility" - a new alliance dedicated to promoting sustainable mobility. A clear objective: she wants to take electric mobility out of its niche model status and become the market leader for a new type of sustainable mobility by 2018. This strategy is planned by the German federal government, which would like to to promote electro-mobility and to see about one million electric vehicles on the roads by 2020. It's a clear way to force the German carmakers for reshaping mobility. The market needs innovations that are intelligently coordinated and networked, from the engines themselves to a reliable infrastructure (charging points) and well-trained experts who can deal with highly complex technologies.

The official text of the Nokia-Microsoft agreement.