Building Partnerships for Innovation

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Executive Summary:

In a business environment characterized by the development of deep, niche expertise in a particular domain, business partnerships can provide a source of innovative rejuvenation. This paper aims to uncover how organizations engage in innovation with business partners through exploratory multiple case study of over 30 innovative European and US companies. Data collection involved 50 semi-structured interviews with senior representatives from R&D, product management, information technology, and marketing. The interview data were complemented by desk research: analysis of corporate reports and validated in follow-up sessions. Three complementary models of business partner innovation emerged: acquisition, strategic alliances, and open source. These can be used in a portfolio manner by organizations with sustainable innovation programs. Organizations make strategic, project-based choices. Based on the three models, we propose a three-dimensional “Co-Innovation Space”, in order to analyze existing innovation project portfolios and/or to plan what kind of innovation approach a company may take within the near future.

Table 1 from the Paper: