Innovation Through Global Collaboration: A New Source of Competitive Advantage

Authors:

• Theo Forbath, Chief Strategist & Practice Leader, Global Product Strategy & Architecture (PSA) Practice, Wipro Technologies
• Peter Brooks, Senior Business Architect, PSA Practice, Wipro Technologies
• Alan MacCormack, Associate Professor, Harvard Business Review

Keywords - Global, Collaboration, Innovation, Products

Description - Much recent research has highlighted the need to rethink the way we manage collaboration. 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creation and pursuit of new ideas is best accomplished by a centralized and collocated R&D team, are rapidly becoming outdated.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 and research that this new model is needed, there is little guidance on how to develop or deploy this ability.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with managers in firms that are making extensive use of collaboration in their innovation efforts.  Our aim was to evaluate how firms achieved greater success in these efforts, as opposed to understanding why or where they chose to collaborate.  Where possible, we captured data on two development projects at each firm; one in which collaboration was perceived to be highly successful and another in which performance fell below expectations.  To increase reliability we interviewed multiple managers from each project; each lasting between one to four hours.  In total, we talked to over 100 managers from 20 firms, gathering data on over 40 projects.  By contrasting the responses, across both projects and firms, we synthesized the strategies and practices that best explained perceived differences in performance.

Our research 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.

Theo Forbath – Chief Strategist

Theo Forbath is a Chief Strategist with Wipro Technologies and leads its Product Strategy and Architecture Practice
Theo is a recognized expert on linking technology and service management investments with business strategies and objectives.
For the last 20 years, Theo has been involved in assisting global enterprises, technology vendors and service providers in designing and implementing complex infrastructures and management solutions.

During the last eight years, Theo has also served on the technical and business advisory boards for a number of high tech companies and service providers, as well as serving on the advisory board for the World Economic Forum on strategic trends and disruptive shifts in technology.  

Strategist with expertise on linking technology investments with business strategies and objectives Worked extensively with high tech manufacturers to design product and services strategies Currently, Theo leads project teams focused on assisting large enterprises, service providers and technology vendors in developing business strategies to transform their key business systems, applications, product and service offerings to competitive global solutions.
Typical engagements involve aligning successful business strategies with designing inter-enterprise architectures, network and systems planning, IT service management strategies, new governance models, product and business unit strategies, and architectures for communications networks. All of the aforementioned projects rely on Theo to track and write about the evolution of communications technology and the impact of the Internet on computing strategies.  
Prior to joining Wipro, Theo was directly involved in leading the consulting group of a regional VAR in New England, as well as in designing best-in-breed network management solutions for distributed environments with Frye Computer Systems.

Patrick Kalaher – Chief Technical Architect

As a Chief Architect, Patrick Kalaher brings over thirteen years of experience in enterprise-wide eBusiness and client/server architecture, implementation and strategic consulting, in a number of business domains, across North America and Europe.

Chief architect for several product architecture and market assessments. Products include: desktop computing platforms, wireless sensor networks and RFID, mobile computing platforms, network and server security appliances.
Chief Architect for several technology and security strategy and ROI studies, in the Enterprise Computing, Storage and Consumer Product industries.  Notable White papers include “Total Cost of Security Patch Management” and “New Insights in PC Management”
Senior Architect for global cross-architecture product strategy at a leading microprocessor manufacturer
Senior Architect for ROI and product strategy engagements for a number of software and hardware vendors
Senior member of architecture and design team for delivery of multi-tier web service-based portal and business-process engine, based on TIBCO software
Solution Architect for global Java-based EAI middleware architecture, implementation and rollout at Global Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Company.
Lead Architect for several middleware architecture assessments for multiple divisions of Global Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Company.
Lead Architect for enterprise-level IT process and change management program at one of the largest retail banks in the United States
Senior Architect for client data strategy and architecture at a leading bank
 Achievements

Patrick is the author of various articles in industry publications such as Java Report and is a regular public speaker, participating in conferences such as Java Expo (London and New York) and OOP Europe
Co-author of “Web site registration proxy system” US Patent 6,496,855. Created for Obongo.com.

 

Plenary Address: June 26, 2008 9:30-10:00 a.m.

Speaker: Theo Forbath, Chief Strategist & Practice Leader, Global Product Strategy & Architecture (PSA) Practice, Wipro Technologies

Title:  Innovation through Global Collaboration: A New Source of Competitive Advantage

Leading firms are increasing seeking and achieving superior innovation by collaborating with partners. Mr. Forbath will present the results of a study involving over 100 managers from 20 firms and over 40 projects that examined the strategies and practices of successful collaborative innovation efforts.  He will explain how developing and executing an explicit collaborative innovation strategy has allowed companies to achieve improved business value, not just lower costs.