I have written here in section 3.4 about different kinds of partnering. These fall mainly into 3 categories:
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Customer/supplier relationships: Are generally tactical/operational, in which one party supplies the other in exchange for a ‘consideration’ (which doesn’t have to be financial).
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Joint venture: In which the parties commit resources to pursue common goals. Normally, they are strategic, being essential to enhancing the value of each individual party and because the parties separately cannot achieve the desired goals on their own.
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Stakeholder investment: Whereby one (or more) party(ies) makes an investment in a second party with a view to, for example ensuring the sustainability and longevity of the second party, being crucial to the investing party’s operations, or influencing the behaviour of the second party in a direction more favourable to the investing party.
In the context of (topic 7. Persistent identifier (PID) schemes) we’ll need to consider whether a joint venture or stakeholder investment alliance is most appropriate to supporting the business model. Operationally, multiple customer/supplier relationships will also be needed.
There is a fourth kind of arrangement, namely true partnering in which participation, pairing and merger of individual interests takes place with consolidation of control. Although they are concerned with collaboration, separate control is not retained. Friendly or hostile merger might be other terms for this kind of alliance.