Innovation through global collaboration
Subtitle: a new source of competitive advantage
By: Alan MacCormack, Theodore Forbath, Peter Brooks, Patrick Kalaher
Contributors: Forbath, Theodore; Brooks, Peter; Kalaher, Patrick; Harvard Business School
Edition: Rev.
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 07-079; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 07-079
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 17
Description: Many recent studies highlight the need to rethink the way we manage innovation. Traditional approaches, based on the assumption that the creation and pursuit of new ideas is best accomplished by a centralized and collocated R&D team, are rapidly becoming outdated. Instead, innovations are increasingly brought to the market by networks of firms, selected for their unique capabilities, and operating in a coordinated manner. This new model demands that firms develop different skills, in particular, the ability to collaborate with partners to achieve superior innovation performance. Yet despite this need, there is little guidance on how to develop or deploy this ability. This article describes the results of a study to understand the strategies and practices used by firms that achieve greater success in their collaborative innovation efforts. We found many firms mistakenly applied an "outsourcing" mindset to collaboration efforts which, in turn, led to three critical errors: First, they focused solely on lower costs, failing to consider the broader strategic role of collaboration. Second, they didn't organize effectively for collaboration, believing that innovation could be managed much like production and partners treated like "suppliers." And third, they didn't invest in building collaborative capabilities, assuming that their existing people and processes were already equipped for the challenge. Successful firms, by contrast, developed an explicit strategy for collaboration and made organizational changes to aid performance in these efforts. Ultimately, these actions allowed them to identify and exploit new business opportunities. In sum, collaboration is becoming a new and important source of competitive advantage. We propose several frameworks to help firms develop and exploit this new ability.
Notes: "Note: This is one of two papers reporting the results from this research. the other is "From outsourcing to global collaboration: new ways to build competitiveness," HBS Working Paper 07-080.

"Date: August 14th 2007"--Added t.p.

"Revised August 2007"--Publisher's website, 2006-2007.

Includes bibliographical references.