Technological support for managing collaborative innovation projects in SME networks

For small and medium-sized enterprises, a collaboration with partners is one of the key success factors for staying competitive in dynamic, globalised markets. Within flexible networks, they combine resources and competences, and they share risks to conjointly develop innovative products and services. However, it is an imminent challenge for concerned enterprises to successfully manage such collaborative developments. Even though common obstacles and theoretical ways of overcoming them are well covered in fundamental research and best practices from the industry show the tremendous success of collaborative innovation, still many projects lack effectiveness and efficiency. Based on a collaboration model, which describes the structural and procedural foundation for innovation in networks, this paper presents concepts and early prototypes for easily applicable instruments. The artifacts significantly facilitate planning, execution, and control of collaborative innovation processes by proving rule-based integration, structuring, and visualizing means for documented knowledge in networks.