Collaboration
The catalyst for growth by Roland Lim
Few today will expect one network service provider to cover the world alone. Telecommunications carriers today are tuning in to collaborative strategies in order to drive continued growth of the industry through challenges of the global economy. A quick glance at the current telecommunications landscape will reveal that the age where one global service provider can do it all is clearly etched in history. It is evident that the new business paradigm embraced by the telecommunications industry is that of partnership and collaboration. Collaboration for growth David Reed, the American computer scientist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumni, who has been involved in the early development of the fundamental TCP/IP networking protocol, captured this shifting business paradigm in what is now known as Reed’s allow users to form groups, the utility of large networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network. The benefits of Reed’s law have certainly been embraced by today’s business leaders, including those involved in telecommunications and technology. Findings from Frost & Sullivan’s recent CEO survey show that 58 percent of respondents acknowledged that forming “strategic partnerships” is a key strategy for success. Yet beyond simply acknowledging and recognizing this strategy, 54 percent of respondents noted that it was one of their top three strategies for future growth. These CEOs were certainly not alone in their views on collaborating for growth.
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reprinted with permission from the Q1 2009 issue of PacnetNews Magazine
According to an article entitled “Which kind of collaboration is right for you?” in the December 2008 edition of the Harvard Business Review, the authors, Gary P. Pisano and Roberto Verganti, said “no companies innovate alone” and acknowledged how a variety of companies have worked with partners to create new technologies, products and services. For example, they cited how technology giant IBM has successfully set up a number of consortia with other companies to develop next-generation semiconductor technologies.