What Makes an Alliance Award Winner? Can you spot the best practices, innovative approaches, and key qualifiers in the line-up? By Cynthia B. Hanson Attendees of the 2017 Global Alliance Summit not only honored the finalists and winners of the 2017 ASAP Alliance Excellence Awards, but also had a chance to meet and question the award winners about what made their projects "fly with winning colors" (as well as "win with flying colors") in the session "Meet the 2017 ASAP Alliance Excellence Award Winners." The selection process was particularly rigorous this year. "Every year we get better and better nominations," explained Norma Watenpaugh, CSAP, chair of the 2017 Alliance Excellence Awards committee and founder and CEO of Phoenix Consulting Group. "This year it was a really tough scoring process-down to 100th of a decimal point in some cases." For starters, finalists always need to demonstrate three key qualifiers to clear the first gate: n Exemplary results n Application of alliance management best practices n Innovative and new thinking The committee then distills the selection processes down with question such as: "What did the alliance team do that produced results-the art and science? Can it be adopted or adapted by other alliances to improve their perfor34 STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE | Q2 * 2017