Choosing successful technology development partners: a best-practice model

Technology development in collaboration has become an important component of technology strategy for a wide range of companies, as they struggle to cope with challenges such as increasing R&D costs and globalisation. The research presented in this paper investigates an important determinant of collaborative success, namely collaborator selection, and investigates which factors are important in choosing the right organisation to work with, how they should be weighted and how they can be assessed. The results are based on a short series of case studies and an extensive survey of companies with bases in the UK. The findings indicate that factors such as technical capability and security are most important, whereas criteria such as an organisation's record in previous collaborations emerges as a poor basis for collaborator selection.