To maintain their global positioning, some of the world's most prominent institutions are pursuing strategic transnational alliances. In this paper I examine one such transnational alliance--that between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the government of Singapore. Using governmentality as a framework of analysis, the paper locates the Singapore-MIT Alliance within the broader policy architecture that underpins Singapore's knowledge economy aspirations. The Alliance demonstrates some of the practical complexities involved in "leap-frogging" into the "value-added" realms of knowledge and service-related production. It highlights the resistances, tensions and contradictions arising from leveraging off foreign expertise to build an education hub. The paper concludes with a discussion of the changing regimes of value arising from aspiring knowledge economies. (Contains 2 notes.)