Why do so many industrial collaborations fail?

This paper examines the different reasons why so many joint ventures and industrial collaborations fail. A recent research exercise identified the most significant barriers to collaboration and included concerns over intellectual property rights, protection of competitive advantage, the problem of benefits being seen to be intangible and the risk of becoming involved with an untested collaborative venture. While these are practical challenges that can be addressed, the problem of mindsets is not as simple. Because collaboration is a complex people issue, it means dealing head on with people´s different preconceptions, personalities and approaches to joint working . A new initiative aimed at encouraging collaborative thinking is called iLabs. These are state-of-the-art spaces specially designed to foster accelerated creative thinking and innovation, and will also be a base for organizations to use the Collabor8 toolkit developed by a team from Cranfield University.