3: Before the Joint Venture

o Peter, are we ready to talk about how to design a successful joint venture and more particularly my joint venture?

Almost. But before we get into the specifics of testing the strategic logic, partnership and fit, and shape and design, we ought to back up for a few minutes and consider a few pre-JV issues.

The first of these relates to why you and your company are even thinking of increasing your actual number of foreign investments. Would it make sense for you to instead expand one of your existing operations? As you know, every time a company establishes a new subsidiary, whether wholly or partially owned, there are a bunch of one-time and ongoing details that have to be dealt with. For some organizations, once everything is factored in, it’s easier to simply grow the scale of a subsidiary that is already in place.