Collusion Collusion is an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition

by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage.[citation needed] It is an agreement among firms or individuals to divide a market, set prices, limit production or limit opportunities.[1] It can involve "wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between the colluding parties".[2] In legal terms, all acts affected by collusion are considered For instance, if virtually all bananas sold in the United States were to come from three companies, they could possibly get together and agree not to charge less than a certain amount for their merchandise. In this way, by eliminating the effect of market competition, the colluding firms force buyers to pay more than they normally would in a free market, which would otherwise naturally lead to lower prices as the competing firms tried to undercut each other. Strategic Alliance

A Strategic Alliance is a relationship between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon goals or to meet a critical business need while remaining independent organizations. This form of cooperation lies between M&A and organic growth. Partners may provide the strategic alliance with resources such as products, distribution channels, manufacturing capability, project funding, capital equipment, knowledge, expertise, or intellectual property..
For example, an oil and natural gas company might form a strategic alliance with a research laboratory to develop more commercially viable recovery processes. A clothing retailer might form a strategic alliance with a single clothing manufacturer to ensure consistent quality and sizing. A major website could form a strategic alliance with an analytics company to improve its marketing efforts. . Some examples of Strategic Alliances In R&D: Microsoft and Nokia - a software partnership for Nokias Windows Phones. o CISCO Systems agreement with Chinas biggest on-line commercial company Alibaba, to explore business services for SMEs. Joint venture

A joint venture (JV) is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets. There are other types of companies such as JV limited by guarantee, joint ventures limited by guarantee with partners holding shares.
Virgin Mobile India Limited is a cellular telephone service provider company which is a joint venture between Tata Tele service and Richard Branson's Service Group. Currently, the company uses Tata's CDMA network to offer its services under the brand name Virgin Mobile, and it has also started GSM services in some states.

A mutual service consortium is a partnership of similar companies in similar industries who pool their resources to gain a benefit that is too Licensing arrangement

Written contract under which the owner of a copyright, know how, patent, service mark, trademark, or other intellectual property, allows a licensee to use, make, or sell copies of the original. Such agreements usually limit the scope or field of the licensee, and specify whether the license is exclusive or non-exclusive, and whether the licensee will pay royalties or some other consideration in exchange. While licensing agreements are mainly used in commercialization of a technology, they are also used by franchisers to promote sales of goods and services. Value chain patnerships At a firm level the value chain can be used in a number of ways. The most basic of which is simply to describe visually the company or a competitor. This is done by simply adapting the generic model to suit your company. In the example below marketing and sales have been separated into different distinct business units, perhaps because these represent such large business units in this particular business:

Dialectical research or dialectical inquiry or dialectical investigation is a form of qualitative research which utilizes the method of dialectic, aiming to discover truth through examining and interrogating competing ideas, perspectives or arguments. Dialectical research can be seen as a form of exploratory research, in that there is not so much a research hypothesis to be tested, but rather new understandings to be developed. In common parlance, a devil's advocate is someone who, given a certain argument, takes a position he or she does not necessarily agree with, for the sake of debate. In taking this position, the individual taking on the devil's advocate role seeks to engage others in an argumentative discussion process. The purpose of such process is typically to test the quality of the original argument and identify weaknesses in its structure, and to use such information to either improve or abandon the original, opposing position. It can also refer to someone who takes a stance that is seen as unpopular or unconventional, but is actually another way of arguing a much more conventional stance.