Innovation for Survival: From Cooperation to Collaboration

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the value and management of collaborative innovation in the development of library services. Open or collaborative innovation is innovation that bridges organizational boundaries. It discusses key aspects of interorganizational innovation and its application in libraries, namely the essence of innovation, the imperative for collaborative innovation, choosing partners and innovation networks, successful management of collaborative innovation, and the barriers to collaborative innovation and their management. It is argued that innovation is pivotal to survival and success in dynamic and complex organizational environments. Increasingly organizations are seeking to pool resources and enter into collaborative alliances in order to achieve large-scale, radical, paradigm innovations. However, the success of such alliances is not guaranteed, and is dependent not only on choosing the right partners but also on the leadership and management of innovation teams, having an understanding of the challenges of collaborative knowledge creation, and negotiating organizational and interorganizational barriers to innovation. While library and information literature has seen much discussion of innovations in terms of the outputs of innovation processes, there has been little discussion of the innovation processes needed to achieve new service developments, and other innovations. This chapter encourages information professionals to think strategically about innovation activities, specifically the management of the performance of collaborative or open innovation.