Success Factors in Cross-Sector Partnerships

It is important to understand how to collaborate effectively, using the relational aspect of innovation.

Partnerships that innovate successfully work strategically to operate as a network, creating strong linkages of trust that facilitate knowledge sharing across different disciplines. This speeds up innovation, as well as mutual learning and performance.

“Today’s technological, service and social innovations are increasingly co-created interactively by participants of collaborative networks” (Russell et al, 2018).

In public-private partnerships, collaborative networks foster tacit knowledge exchange and economies of scale. The use of social technologies and platforms makes it possible to share data more easily across networks; to discuss new ways of using existing data; and to transform data into new knowledge for innovation. Networks can also function as communities to build connections, extending outside the immediate partner organization to experts in the broader community of stakeholders.