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In the contemporary business environment, companies must constantly consider methods to enhance their competitive advantage and create value for their customers. The purpose of this paper is to develop a research model based on a business ecosystem view. Within a business ecosystem, the authors identified the key factors of co-development and the manner in which these factors affect a company’s innovation performance.

The theoretical hypotheses are confirmed by partial least squares analysis of survey responses collected from information and communication technology (ICT) and hotel industries in Taiwan.

In both industries, the results suggest that a firm’s co-development within its own ecosystem has positive effects on innovation performance. For companies in the ICT industry, collaborative networks and partner selection have significant impacts on the firms’ co-development, but their information technology (IT) capability does not; in contrast, in the hotel industry, partner selection and IT capability have significant impacts on firm co-development, but their collaborative network does not.

This study contributes to the literature of business ecosystem and co-development by offering a co-development model. As both conceptual and empirical research on this topic is still underdeveloped, this study provides fresh insights into collaboration management and offers significant theoretical and managerial implications from a business ecosystem perspective.

The purpose of this article is to introduce a framework for internet supported inter‐organizational product development, which enables companies to efficiently configure their development processes according to their needs.

Three ideal types of partner integration are identified and specific design guidelines for each type are proposed. Current approaches for product development collaboration are analysed. Based on their shortcomings the main approach of this paper evolves. Additionally the main results of interviews with experts are used to develop and introduce a framework which has been tested partially in the shipbuilding industry.

The paper identifies three types of partner integration and proposes specific design guidelines.

The framework introduced in this paper provides guidance for future research in the area of product development collaboration.

The framework further supports managers in designing efficient and effective inter‐organizational product development collaboration by choosing the appropriate level of partner integration.

The paper presents a practical and usable framework for internet supported inter‐organizational product development collaboration. The main focus is on designing the partnership interaction.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the effects of expatriation on the development of career capital among the partners of expatriates.

The study draws on in-depth interviews with 30 Finnish partners of expatriates.

The results reflect the various learning experiences reported by partners of expatriates that developed their career capital during expatriation. The learning experiences related to the experience of living abroad itself and to the specific activities undertaken when abroad. The extent to which partners developed knowing-why, knowing-how and knowing-whom career capital was found to partly reflect their situation abroad as stay-at-home partners or as employees in less-demanding or more-demanding jobs. Though the experiences were developmental for all partners as have been reported among expatriates, the authors also identified several aspects in which partners' experiences differed from the typical developmental experiences of expatriates.

The results also highlight the influence of initiative, an active role and career self-management skills in partners' career capital development.

This paper advances the understanding of how expatriation affects expatriate partners' career capital, a topic that has not previously been studied in-depth.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how trust develops between partner firms in the context of intercultural business relationships and how understanding of the business culture of a partner firm and adaptation to it can be a driving force for the beginning and maintaining of trust development with that partner.

The study is of a qualitative nature and employs “elite interviewing” methodology for the aims of data collection. The analysis is conducted through theoretically‐informed reading of interviews.

Managers constantly learn the business culture of the partner through interactions. Adaptation based on the acquired business culture knowledge is found to be as important for the development of trust between business relationships' parties. A “moderate” level of cultural adaptation is identified as most favourable for this development. Additionally, a categorization of cultural adaptation within business relationships is proposed.

The insufficient number of personal interviews within a specific industrial context does not allow a generalisation of the study outcomes.

Research which addresses the importance of cultural adaptation for trust development within business relationships, is scarce. This study attempts to fill in this gap. Furthermore, it shows the need to consider business culture, rather than national culture, while studying business relationships. Finally, the study provides interesting avenues for further research.

Partnerships with business involvement became a key trend in development cooperation since the late 1980s. Partnerships emerged as promising governance mechanism; however, governing partnerships in practice remained challenging – promise and reality seem to diverge. This chapter scrutinizes the tension between the promises of partnerships as governance arrangements and their actual governance challenges. It disentangles the complexity of governing partnerships by developing a framework based on a continuum between efficiency- and participation-orientation. This chapter identifies partnering approaches and their governance orientations based on an extensive review of literature in diverse academic fields and grey literature on the emergence and evolution of partnerships in development cooperation since the 1980s. Examples from the Dutch development cooperation provide illustrations for each partnership approach. Efficiency- and participation-orientation highlight competing governance rationales, logics and partnership characteristics. Partnership approaches that aim to embrace both perspectives have to deal with the inherent governance paradox between control and collaboration. This chapter identifies three key implications for research and practice: exploring new governance approaches and practices, adapting development agencies towards partnering and coordinating partnership approaches at international level. Understanding the tension between the promises of partnerships as governance arrangements and their actual governance challenges does not only contribute to more nuanced conceptualizations of partnering approaches for development but has also implications on how to govern partnerships for development in practice.

Outlines a product definition process which has proved to be successful with the Queensferry Telecom Operation within Hewlett Packard. The process involves two levels of customer relationship – one classed as “development partners” – and the rest as “other” customers. The development partners directly influence a new product definition with supporting information drawn from the other customers and the market competition. The other customers′ needs are addressed after product launch as part of a follow‐on programme of incremental development.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and unbundle the complex processes underpinning development of alliance capabilities, particularly in the context of emerging country multinational enterprises. More specifically, this paper focuses on how firms internalize and translate knowledge generated from experiences gained by participating in international collaborations.

The authors adopt an exploratory case study approach to undertake in-depth processual analysis of alliance capability development in an Indian biopharmaceutical company. The authors focused their analysis on the initial four international alliances the company formed and identified key elements pertaining to alliance capabilities that the company internalized and those that it could not, as this was key in understanding alliance capability.

The research shows that based on experiences from previous alliances, the Indian organization was able to overhaul its negotiation and governance designing processes and practices as well as made robust changes to its internal communication and coordination practices. Interestingly, the company organization, however, did not make any significant changes to its processes and practices regarding partner selection.

The results from our study can be used by managers to develop processes and practices when it comes to developing alliance capabilities.

The paper is novel, as it addresses two specific gaps in the nascent alliance capability literature. First, it provides insights on how different constituent elements/aspects of alliance capability actually develop and integrate within the organizational system over time, and in the process, the paper identifies that some aspects are better internalized as compared to other aspects. Second, by focusing the attention on an Indian biopharmaceutical company, the authors attempt to address a gap in alliance capability development research, which has been neglected in emerging country multinational entities.

This paper aims to address the crucial interactions that a start-up enacts with actors from the public sphere in a context of medical technologies. The public actor commonly plays multiple roles, ranging from co-developers and financiers to large-scale users, which are all pivotal to the development and survival of the new venture. The paper investigates the possible “dark sides” of a start-up’s marriage with a public partner, departing from three specific roles the public sphere can assume in relation to a start-up: as a development partner, as a financer and as a customer.

The study builds on an in-depth empirical case study of a Swedish med-tech startup company.

The authors find the financing role to be least problematic, whereas the customer role is the most problematic in that it provides numerous barriers to the possible development and growth of a start-up firm striving to get new customers in a public setting. Examples of the most prominent barriers found are regulations, complex decision-making processes and assessment elements of med-tech products that are outside the control of the startup firm, hence issues that cannot be handled within inter-organizational relationships.

The study builds on 27 in-depth interviews, which were undertaken during 2005-2013, thus contributing detailed data about a start-up’s many and crucial interactions with different public actors. Departing from three different roles, a public partner can adopt in relation to a start-up, (development, co-financer and customer) provides results with managerial implications for start-up’s and policy implications for health-care policy.

The paper aims to advance knowledge by investigating the main factors that impact on innovation through the co-development process between researchers and firms at the very early stage of proof of concept.

The authors developed an empirical analysis on the proof of concept network project, through a mixed empirical analysis. They explored the main factors that affect the enactment of the co-development process and tested the impact of such factors on the probability for partners to enact a co-development project and generate innovation.

From the quantitative analysis comes out that the trust of the research team into the potentiality of the technology, the commitment of researchers concerning the scalability of technology and the IP value issued by external experts have a positive impact on the probability to create a match among partners and generate innovation.

Even if all the population of technologies (108) considered in the project implementation are analyzed, the development of the empirical analysis on a specific project within a single country represents a limitation. Future analysis will concentrate on a larger panel of proof of concept experience across Europe.

The success of a co-development process between researchers and companies at the embryonic phase of the technology considers the opportunity to exploit the technologies into real products for the market.

This is an empirical analysis of the first Italian proof of concept implementation that deeply investigates which critical factors can enable innovation by enacting a co-development process between researchers and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).