Partnership innovation : using trends in the "new economy" to develop mutually exclusive competitive advantage

The New Economy has been responsible for a number of interesting approaches to innovation. While much of it has focused on product and process innovation as attempts to differentiate products, product service augmentation and business models very little attention has been afforded to partnership innovation. This paper offers a definition of partnership innovation as: Partnership innovation combines elements of process innovation management and product innovation management within a network structure that neither partner can create using its own resources to meet customer/market-determined expectations for product and/or service performance at an economic (viable) cost. Third party involvement is typical. The paper offers examples of partnership innovation and proposes a model to explore potential partnership innovation possibilities