Managing Networks of Supplier and Customer Relationships for Technological Innovation: Initial Case Study Findings

This paper concerns the problem of how companies, who seek to develop new technology, can successfully capitalise on the whole pool of resources and technologies available within their network, whilst at the same time cope with the problem of loss of control of knowledge and technologies to other parties in their network. Taking point of departure from their previous conceptual and empirical work (e.g. Johnsen and Ford, 1999; 2000), the authors begin by briefly introducing the conceptual framework, and its theoretical foundation, forming the basis of the case studies. This framework includes a set of ‘collaboration activities’ that are reported in major bodies of empirical work to be key to managing both customer and supplier collaboration. The paper reports the initial findings from the first of four in-depth case studies of collaborative innovation in networks. This section includes an outline of the overall project methodology and elaborates on some methodological problems experienced during the facilitation process of the cases studies; this section also discusses the steps that were taken to overcome the problems. The first case centres on an automotive fuel tank supplier (whose name cannot be revealed for confidentiality reasons) and its development project of a new fuel tank in which a new fuel tank technology has been applied. Initial analysis of the case study interviews, reveals the different perceptions of the set of collaboration activities during the project and how the complex network in which the actors operate simultaneously enabled and constrained each activity in different ways and to different degrees.