Harness collaboration between manufacturing Small and medium-sized enterprises through a collaborative platform based on the business model canvas

Innovation, open innovation, and collaborative platforms are concepts in effervescence in the last few years. Innovation’s future will observe a growing number of collaborations. The links between collaboration and collaborative platforms are known in the transport and accommodation sector (such as Uber) however are less used in manufacturing. This paper aims to identify the main challenges between manufacturing firms which intend to collaborate enabled by a prototype platform. A collaborative business model was designed using the business model canvas and tested using a real case to generate valuable collaboration. Collaboration experimentation was monitored over 21 weeks between two firms of the Quebec aerospace cluster and ended with a semi-structured interview. Six challenges were identified: partner selection, commitment and trust, intellectual property management, collaboration evaluation, collaboration symmetry and terminology difficulties. Suggested solutions included, compatibility criteria between the partners, creating a vocabulary lexicon, and establishing collaboration expectations prior to collaboration.