Collaborate to Innovate
Many CEOs now see collaboration as key to their success with innovation. They know they cannot do it all using internal resources. So they look outside for other organisations to partner with. A good example was previously quoted as a weird combination – Mercedes and Swatch who collaborated to produce the Smart car. Each brought dissimilar skills and experiences to the team.
Costa Coffee is a chain of coffee shops which is in fierce competition with Starbucks and Cafe Nero in the UK coffee bar market. It has had considerable success by collaborating. Costa develops concessions with key partners. Current concession partners include coffee stores in Abbey National banks, WHSmiths and Ottakars book stores and Homebase DIY stores. The concession stores are managed by the Costa team who provide high quality coffee and service experience to businesses who want to provide their customers with that little something extra. Customers in Concession stores can relax with a cup of coffee and food offering as they take a break from retail therapy, consider that purchase or await an appointment.
October 25th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
I think what Costa Coffee is doing is an interesting innovation in retailing its product. But in my opinion it is innovation and not the partnering process for innovation. A partenering process for innovation presupposes co creation of ideas by combining mutual resources. Such co creation can occur between a company and its customers or some times two distinct companies like the example of Ford and Bose Music system working together to improve the shock absorber system for the automobiles