Multilateral and multidimensional strategic cooperation

One of the key concepts in international cooperation is the creation of strategic partnerships: Following this concept the cooperation between two or more institutions claims to be intentional, sustainable and comprehensive in a way that it encompasses research cooperation as well as student exchange, common teaching programs and an overall institutional cooperation on all levels.
The trigger for the engagement in strategic partnership may be national or regional interest, the “prestige” of the targeted partner institution, the intention of the university or faculty leadership and academic interest in common research topics and the option of collaborative teaching. Many international and national programs support so defined strategic partnerships (see the EU program with the very name “strategic partnerships”) which are sought after in order to participate in third party funding schemes. “Strategic” in that way gets a double meaning: a) to cooperate in a purposeful way with the partner and b) in order to be part of the “internationalization community”.
The concept of strategic partnerships contributed a lot to the internationalization of HEI, at the same time, sometimes the cooperation within defined “strategic” partners can become a constraint in terms of predetermining the collaboration topics, the level and the means, above all if there is the claim to cope with al the criteria above mentioned. The setting of different multidimensional frameworks of strategic partnerships opens a series of options to broaden the concept in thematic networks, regional orientation or level of cooperation. In this contribution we present an example of a multilateral strategic partnership framework of LMU in order to show, how such a multilateral approach may be carried out.