Strategic venture partner selection for collaborative innovation in production systems: A decision support system-based approach

Collaborative innovation and product development projects can be regarded as an emerging challenge in innovation management, being partly reflected by the currently observable industry demand for support from strategic planning tools serving this purpose. A software tool for providing operationalized decision support has been developed, based on previous research in the area of collaborative innovation success factors. By applying experience of coaching a public research organization in finding a suitable partner for joining forces in the research and development of a future energy technology, this paper presents a solution taking into account the given competitive restrictions. Being designed for usage within a coaching framework, the tool provides a multi-perspective and interactive overview of potential venture partners to the decision-makers. Furthermore, the adoption of an integrated partner selection process for supporting technology-intensive organizations in their preparation and implementation of successful collaborative ventures is suggested. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.