This paper examines the challenges and opportunities firms face in transitioning to collaborative innovation, and how to address subsequent issues.

Key findings:

• Firms have now recognised that innovative ideas can emerge from anywhere and it is more fruitful to engage others in collaborative innovation.
• The transition to collaborative innovation poses three major challenges for a firm: ensuring that it is ready to collaborate with others; building trust among partners; and establishing a business model that incorporates governance mechanisms for a mutually rewarding relationship.
• Firms wanting to engage in collaborative innovation must: examine their culture, organisational design and technological infrastructure; establish a new target model of collaboration; establish trusted partnerships in which intellectual properties will be protected and gains will be shared; and establish decision rights and redress mechanisms.

This business briefing outlines four models of progressively collaborative innovation among firms.

Through a rich case study of Thomson Reuters we examine the transition challenges, as well as opportunities, that firms are likely to face and how to address the readiness, trust and governance issues.

This paper seeks to classify collaboration models, drawn from insights from our research into collaborative innovation, and to help firms transition to an appropriate collaborative innovation model.

Authors:
Michael Barrett and Chander Velu of Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK; Rajiv Kohli, Mason School of Business, College of William and Mary, USA; Torsten Oliver Salge, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany; and David Simoes-Brown, Nesta