Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity

Chapter 13. Collaborating for innovation

1 + 1 + 1 = 5

This is how a company participating in the 2001 survey of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) summed up the benefits of collaboration.

One aspect that made the development of the Lotus Elise such an innovation success was the company's willingness to collaborate, internally as well as externally. Collaboration is yet another arrow in the quiver of innovation. When considering that innovation happens through the connection of previously unconnected bodies of knowledge, and when assumptions are challenged, it is easy to understand why innovative companies are keen collaborators. It is often the assumptions we carry about what we can and cannot do that prevent us from innovation – and if someone comes along and just questions as to why we do things the way we do, it can help us to realise the mental models we have, and hence enable us to change them.

This chapter will shed some light on issues around collaboration, looking at reasons as to why companies collaborate, what benefits they gain, what can be in the way of collaboration, how collaboration can be encouraged, and what different forms of collaboration there are. This edition also has an additional section that looks at particular forms of collaboration in the context of innovation: user-led innovation and open innovation.

"The best innovators aren't lone geniuses. They are people who can take an idea that's obvious in one context and apply it in not-so-obvious ways to ...