she was entering a field that had witnessed the biggest win-lose partnership ever—Microsoft winning total dominance by “partnering” with IBM on the desktop operating system. VMware’s potential partners would be extremely skeptical of any independent-operating-system company proposing a similar “win-win.” So Greene came up with a shocking rule: Partnerships should be 49/51, with VMware getting the 49. Did she just tell her team to lose? That definitely begs the question “Why?” Greene said, “I had to give our business development people permission to be good to the partners, because one-sided
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