Case Study/ Scenario

Instructions: Answer ALL questions in this section after reading the case study.

The Covid-19 pandemic cause many firms to join forces to combat the crisis and save lives. These initiatives included developing much needed test kits and state of the art machinery to aid respiration for patients that are hospitalized. Two such strategic alliances are detailed below.

Mount Sinai Health System & RanalytixAl

Mount Sinai Health System is a New York-based network of more than a dozen hospitals and medical research and education centers. They partnered with RenalytixAI, a company that specializes in diagnostic testing, to form Kantaro Biosciences after seeing a need for a new class of diagnostic tests in the wake of COVID-19. In August 2020, the venture created COVID-SeroIndex, the first COVID-19 antibody testing kit made for research purposes. Soon after, Kantaro received regulatory approvals in the U.S. and Europe for a clinical version of the kit named COVID-SeroKlir. Developed in New York City during a period when the region was considered to be at the epicentre of the pandemic, the technology of the test has been used more than 120,000 times and it uses two viral antigens to reduce the incidences of false positives. It also doesn't require specialized equipment. Even with the subsequent approval of several vaccines, the need for a deeper understanding of COVID-19how long its antibodies last, how understanding them can affect treatment and therapeuticsand having a company in place to develop and scale up a test for the next health crisis is more necessary than ever.

Ventec Life Systems & General Motors

Ventec Life Systems was a small company based in Bothell, Washington, producing state-of-the-art ventilators when the first U.S. case of COVID-19 was detected just north of Seattle. The accelerating national health crisis was compounded by a severe shortage of ventilators, and to meet the urgent need Ventec executives knew they'd need a powerful partner to scale up from its production rate of 150 multi-function ventilators, the FDA-approved VOCSN, which combines five devices into a single portable unit: ventilator, oxygen concentrator, cough assist, suction pump, nebulizer. The company partnered with General Motors, modifying a production facility in Indiana and training hundreds of employees. Within a month, the joint entity was delivering the first of 30,000 ventilators ordered by the federal government, and by June monthly production of VOCSN increased from 150 to more than 10,000.

Questions:

1. What kind of strategic alliance has occurred between:
   1. Mount Sinai Health System & RanalytixAl
   2. Ventec Life Systems & General Motors

Justify your answers. (10 marks)

Answer:

1. What business level cooperative strategies do you expect from both partnerships? Discuss. (10 marks)

1. What corporate level cooperative strategies do you expect from both partnerships? Discuss. (10 marks)
2. Explain four (4) risks associated with both strategic alliance partnerships. (10 marks)