Management of Innovation 301
Digital Report Assessment
the markets (Huang and Yu 2011, 385). Next, collaboration with university can help the firms
each other because it can help to access to the resources and technology more easily (Lu
2009, 125). Besides that, collaborations allow firms to “develop their services and help in
expand their market while reducing the cost through sharing resources” (Elmuti, Abou-Zaid
and Jia 2012, 16). These are relevant to GroupMap as presently GroupMap is using these
strategy to form alliances.
GroupMap can learn some knowledge from its alliances. GroupMap has partnered with
Curtin University to help in research and development. Furthermore, as they had partnered,
staff in Curtin can register for a free professional account in GroupMap. Recently, Jeremy
also mentioned that GroupMap will find some contracts with Canadian distributors to expand
his innovation.
3.3.3 Limitations of collaboration strategies
Despite there are advantages of collaborations among the alliances, there are some
limitations on collaborations. Instead of co-operations, there will be competition among each
other. Huang and Yu (2011, 384) claims that the outcome of the collaborations within
competitors (or same industry) will bring win-lose situation. This is because both partners are
in a collaboration racing to learn. Either one of them learn the fastest will be the stronger
competitors. This will bring negative impact to both of the parties. Besides, one of the
alliances might have their own individual interest and can cause “lack of interest of the
alliances as a whole” (Paik 2005, 493). Moreover, there will be loss of competitive
knowledge as alliances will exploit each other’s organisational knowledge. This is known as
“spillover effects” (Huang and Yu 2010, 387).
3.1.4 Scope for more collaborative strategies
GroupMap can use licencing as part of his collaboration strategies. Licencing is “a
relatively common and well-established method of of acquiring technology”. (Trott 2012,
239). Licensing can help in fasten the entry to different technologies and cost of technology
can be reduced (Trott 2012, 239).