Principal      Robert Porter Lynch

Associates

Richard Marrs David N. Burt  Gary Loblick  Steve Rogers Ted Ramstad  Gerry Dehkes  William Lundberg  Mike Nevin  Tom Halle

The Warren Company is a networked organization. At our core are the two principals, Robert Porter Lynch and L. Richard Marrs. Because our assignments can be anything from one day to over a year, and our clients range from small businesses to large corporations and governments, we treat every assignment as a special client with unique needs and specialized desired outcomes. We have assembled a large network of world-class specialists that share our values, commitment, and approach to organizational excellence.

All the members of our worldwide team have global experience and extensive operational excellence in the real world. Most have one or more advanced degrees, many are multi-lingual, and a significant number are well published and considered thought leaders in their fields. Several teach part or full-time at the graduate or post graduate level. All share a powerful vision to innovate and collaborate. These consultants will bring extensive experience in both alliance and strategy, organizational development, and process facilitation. Additionally, they have broad experience with clients on both the private and public sectors, including NGO’s and government entities.

Robert Porter Lynch
CEO – The Warren Company
A Network of Alliance Professionals

Thought Leadership: Mr. Lynch has been recognized for his groundbreaking work in creating "the architecture of cooperation" which underpins thousands of strategic alliances in this country and around the world. He has written several books and the profession’s first benchmarking studies. He pioneered the initial research in Alliance Architectures with Best Practices research beginning in 1988, followed by a series of bench-marking studies in Alliance Formation and Management in 1993, Strategic Sourcing in 1997, and e-Commerce in 1999. Mr. Lynch continues his quest to discover and innovate in the Strategic Alliance Profession. Robert is deeply engaged in the next edge of cooperation, specifically using Alliances as Engines of Innovation, the Leadership Role of Alliance Champions, the Architecture of Trust, Synergistic Negotiations, and the New Economics of Synergistic Systems.

Economic Development: While a community revitalization specialist in the 1970's, he designed and implemented private-public partnerships for urban commercial and neighborhood revitalization programs resulting in over $20 million in new business investments and hundreds of historic restorations of low income neighborhood homes in declining inner cities. Robert also established joint labor-management committees to improve labor productivity in both the private and public sectors. 1980, at a time when interest rates were 18-20%, Robert became a Development Banker, founding a Certified Development Company, which resulted in over $20 million in small business loans in the first 18 months, as well as a state program to use $10 million in public sector pension funds to underwrite small business loans. Several years later he transformed an old factory into an innovative technology business "incubator" occupied by 65 growing companies. He developed business strategies, plans, marketing programs, debt/equity financing for numerous of these incubating businesses, assisting many of these smaller businesses in forming strategic alliances to launch their growth during a time when bank and venture capital money was extremely scarce. He also was instrumental in founding a high technology consortium. As an entrepreneur, Robert has developed, owned, and operated several commercial real estate projects including apartments, offices, marina, and retail. In one urban neighborhood, to catalyze the revitalization effort he restored a historic building, transforming it into a $1 million award-winning restaurant/inn which was cited in major travel guides and restaurant reviews for excellence and innovation. He also conducted feasibility studies for shopping centers, housing projects, hotels, and offices.

Consulting: In his consulting practice, Mr. Lynch places a strong emphasis on using best-practice architectures for successful organizational transformation and building capability inside organizations, for clients, strategic implementation is where the real value lies. He and his team have focused their efforts on building alliances for scores of companies throughout the globe in a wide variety industries ranging from aerospace (aviation & defense), automotive, energy, financial services (banking, real estate, insurance), high tech (computers, electronics, telecommunications,) and medical (biotech, heath care, instrumentation, pharmaceutical, managed health care), and petro-chemicals. His clients have included AT&T, Accenture, Astra-Merck, AT&T, Bell Canada, BellSouth, Cisco Systems, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Eli Lilly, GE, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Hewlett Packard, Honeywell, IBM, Intuit, Lockheed-Martin, Lucent, Media One, Mobil, NCR, PacBell, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Procter & Gamble, Prudential, Smith Kline Beecham, Sprint, Thomsen Financial, USAA, Warner Lambert, Wells Fargo, and Xerox as well as small businesses and governmental agencies.

Executive Coaching: Empowering top executives to become adept at alliances is critical to success. Robert is well known for working closely with top executives providing the concepts, best practices, tools, and skills that produce quality results quickly. Robert has acted as negotiations coach for scores of companies, joining them together collaboratively in strategic relationships. His unique understanding of the nature of champions has enabled many companies to overcome resistance to the innovations alliances bring. His commitment to training executives throughout the world in the best practices in alliance formation and management has resulted in over five thousand people around the world with deep skills and capabilities in alliance formation and management. Robert often speaks before international and domestic business groups, and has appeared on television and radio, and syndicated tape distribution.

Author: To fill the gap in understanding and operating cooperative ventures, Mr. Lynch enjoys writing. He wrote the award winning book, The Practical Guide to Joint Ventures and Corporate Alliances (John Wiley & Sons, 1987), which is based on his own experiences along with scores of other managers operating "in the trenches." The "architecture of cooperation" is the focus of his best selling book, Business Alliances: The Hidden Competitive Weapon, (John Wiley & Sons, 1993), which details the state-of-the-art in alliance formation, design, and operations. He wrote the popular chapter “Fostering Champions” for Peter Drucker’s Leader of the Future book (1999). He has just finished a book on Cooperative Entrepreneurship and is currently writing two books: Breakthroughs in Cooperative Negotiations and The Architecture of Trust. His books have been translated into several languages, and his numerous articles on alliances have appeared in a broad range of magazines. He is often quoted in business journals such a Nations Business, The Wall Street Journal, and The Conference Board Reports.

Business Leadership and Community Activities: Robert has actively served in leadership role in numerous business support and community organizations such as Chambers of Commerce, technology organizations and local economic development,. He has served as officer or on the board of directors of more than twenty not-for-profit civic organizations. 

Education: Mr. Lynch holds a master’s degree in Organizational Development from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree in International Relations from Brown University. He is an adjunct faculty member of the Universities of Alberta, British Columbia, and San Diego; and has served as a faculty member of the American Management Association, American College of Physician Executives, the Canadian Management Centre and the Institute for International Learning.

Military: U.S. Navy, 197074, Lieutenant, served as Operations Officer, Electronics Officer, and Legal Officer, Bronze Star, Combat Duty in Viet Nam, Special Commendation, twice selected for advance promotion.

Personal: Mr. Lynch is listed in Who's Who: Global Leaders. He is founding Chairman of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, and has chaired the Strategic Integration and Alliance Committee of the Common Enterprise initiative of the State of the World Forum. He served as a Lieutenant in the US Navy, with combat duty in Vietnam. Robert resides in Naples, Florida.

L. Richard Marrs Jr.

For The Warren Company, Richard specializes in collaborative processes for developing and implementing:

• Strategy,
• Alliances,
• Innovation,
• Organizational development,
• Knowledge Management, and
• Mergers and Acquisitions.

• His 35 plus years of experience and background includes work in collaborative innovation, strategic alliances & partnerships, software design, knowledge management, competitive intelligence, strategic planning, mergers & acquisitions, and materials management.

Prior to joining The Warren Company, Richard was one of the three founders of Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Coemergence. The company develops advanced software applications for professionals who find, analyze and act on new business opportunities. While at Coemergence, Richard served as the company’s Vice President Business Development, Vice President Customer Solutions and as a member of the board of directors from 2000 – 2006. He was involved in all aspects of the company’s start up and evolution to a successful company with commercial sales to a number of Fortune 500 companies. He currently serves as an outside consultant to the company.

Prior to joining Coemergence, Richard spent over 30 years gaining experience in academia, teaching in public schools, managing small businesses, and within Fortune 100 companies in the worldwide mining industry where he worked in mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and partnerships, knowledge management, competitive intelligence, strategic planning, materials management and collaborative work practices.

He previously served as Director of Corporate Development at Magma Copper and later at BHP Copper as Vice President of New Business Development. During this time, he traveled extensively worldwide, developing extensive knowledge and experience in international business. Magma and BHP were considered two of the mining industry's most successful acquirers during the 1990s, and Magma was recognized and written about as one of the most innovative and well-managed companies during that time. While at BHP, Richard laid the groundwork for a knowledge management function within the company. 

After leaving BHP and just prior to helping found Coemergence, he served as president of knOwhere Inc., a Silicon Valley-based consultancy specializing in collaborative work processes and creative problem solving.

Richard has authored a number of papers and articles, and has led workshops at a number of knowledge management and competitive intelligence conferences. He has traveled extensively in Asia, South America and Africa.

Richard holds a BA in Psychology from the University of South Alabama in Mobile and an MBA from the University of Phoenix in Tucson, Arizona. From 1986 to 1990, Richard served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Phoenix.

Richard is a Professional Member of the Institute of Management Consultants. He lives and works from his home in the San Francisco Bay Area

How We Engage With Our Clients

Building the alignment, support, and involvement of the organization, its stakeholders, and partners in any new formal alliance and strategy is essential for long-term success. 

The adage: “People Support what they help Create,” is a fundamental rule in the design and engagement at the front-end of our projects with all of our clients. Therefore, we will work closely with you, your core team, , and any other stakeholders you designate. Our team of outside experts will work as alliance partners with your internal teams, including them in all facets of our processes as mutually agreed.

Our engagements are built upon developing a clear and precise understanding of the current situation, agreed objectives and desired outcomes, within a defined and measureable value proposition for the client and your stakeholders and partners.

We bring to every engagement:

• Proven collaborative architecture and processes – unlocking the hidden knowledge, ideas, creativity, innovation within your organization and alliances, and ensuring the right people are involved
• In depth preparation – that allows focus on what’s critical, not wasting time on side issues
• Time compression – accomplishing three to six months of work in 2, 3 or 4-day time spans in all of our workshops
• Team alignment – building trust and cohesion within your alliances and teams ensuring execution and success with detailed action plans
• Proven results – with alliances, public and private organizations, and government departments, ministries, and agencies

While processes often look the same on paper, our collaborative processes are based on over 25 years of work with a wide diversity of clients. The processes have evolved over time with new learnings and insights. All follow a series of specific building blocks, sequenced so the client creates and implements the optimum alliance foundation, strategy and high-level action plan for the alliance, the partners, and the operating environment.

By using proven best practices, you and your stakeholders can expect an extremely high chance of achieving powerful results.