The latest Vested book, Vested: How P&G, McDonald’s and Microsoft are Redefining Winning in Business Relationships, will hit the street officially next week, and naturally I couldn’t be more excited.

All of the Vested books are special of course but this fourth in the Vested series answers a big question—does it work in the real world? The authors—myself and Dr. Karl Manrodt with Jeanne Kling—provide actual case histories of companies that are embracing the Vested business principles of collaboration, innovation and sharing value to achieve the long-term win-win. As you can see from the title these are major companies that you have probably heard of; they are employing the Vested model with huge success.

I often say Vested is a journey and while the destination—the collaborative win-win—is much the same for everyone, the paths that are taken to reach the goal are often quite different. Hey, that is what a flexible framework is all about!

So over the next few weeks I want to shamelessly share (and promote!) the ideas that drive that journey and the implementation process with some snippets from Vested.

The first case study we feature in Vested is the P&G story. The company’s groundbreaking contract with Jones Lang LaSalle in 2003 flipped the conventional approach to outsourcing on its head: P&G created a business model based on contracting for transformation instead of contracting for day-to-day transactions.

A.G. Lafley had taken the helm in 2000 as P&G’s CEO with a purpose: to lead the organization into the twenty-first century; innovation became a priority under his stewardship. He questioned the sustainability of the ‘in-house-invent-it-ourselves’ model, betting that looking beyond P&G’s walls could produce more highly profitable innovations that would drive value for both P&G and the parties bringing innovation to P&G.

This thinking required rejection of a “not invented here” mindset to enthusiasm for those ideas “proudly found elsewhere.” By 2003, P&G began extending this thinking to how it worked with its suppliers. P&G believed that, by working with world class outsource service providers it could drive costs lower and ensure that service offerings remain on the leading edge of best practice. The idea of going outside the corporate walls for innovation by bringing it inside through outsourcing was dramatic and bold—and it worked. P&G deployed a Vested approach when it penned a pioneering outsource contract with JLL spanning 60 countries that included facility management, project management and strategic occupancy services. The scope and complexity of the deal was a first for both companies, as well as the approach of the commercial contract. Was P&G happy? Well, JLL won supplier of the year two years in a row out of 80,000 suppliers so that is a good endorsement for JLL’s ability to deliver on the promise.

Vested is important because it goes behind the scenes and interviews the key players who masterminded their Vested relationships and shows how these companies came to the Vested system, implemented it and saw it work.

I hope your appetite is whetted.  You can pre-order Vested on Amazon.com right now and it will ship on the release date (Sept. 18).

As a side note: I’ll be on Fox Business News on Sept. 19 (the day after the book launch). So mark your calendars and tune in next Wednesday—how cool is that!